Freenet

Surf the Deep Web

Computer or, internet problems?

Home

A Distributed Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System

Following the Aurora attack, in the standoff between Google and the Chinese Government, this week, Google redirected all it's search engine queries from China to its (uncensored) servers in Hong Kong. As big and powerful as Google is, I think that this time, it may have bitten off even

more than it can chew. It will be interesting to see what happens next! With Governments world-wide moving towards stricter control of the internet, at the moment, the music and film industries seem to have the edge over 'illegal' file-sharers, but I wonder what the law-makers intend to do about the Deep-Web. A survey carried out in 2001 estimated that for every two and a half MegaBytes of data that could be accessed by search engines such as Google and Yahoo etc., there was another MegaByte that couldn't, and at the time, this amounted to 7,500 TB of data - a lot! The Deep-Web is made up

mainly of innaccessible database files not for human consumption, but there are also lots of private forums, blogs, web sites and file sharing groups that simply do not appear in 'normal' Google or Yahoo searches on the 'public' internet, but which are accessible through 'special' or, more targeted search engines. One assumes that a lot of this data/traffic is illegal in some way or, otherwise, it would be 'out there' for us all to see.

Freenet - P2P accounts for a lot of internet traffic

It is said that 'illegal' P2P file sharing accounts for 40% of all internet traffic and this view is supported by what happened in Sweden when, on the day that new anti-piracy laws were introduced, total internet traffic dropped by 30% - overnight! There's a strongly held view that the introduction of tougher laws will simply force more traffic from the public internet on to the Deep-Web and the growing popularity of services such as "Freenet" seems to support this view.

Freenet - What is it?

Readers who are worried that 'Big Brother' is watching what they do on the internet or, who prefer to do what they do 'anonymously' should give the Freenet Project a look up. Give up some of your computer memory and hard disk space to Freenet and your internet anonimity/ privacy is assured because all the content that is accessible through their own search engine is encrypted and stored on computers throughout the world - not on centralized servers. The brain child of Ian Clarke, Freenet is based on his paper "A Distributed Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System". Ian started the Freenet Project around July of 1999, and continues to coordinate the project. Don't expect Freenet to whizz along at the same speed as the 'normal' internet, but everything you do, will be private.

Freenet - Any comments or, questions?

You can leave a comment or, ask a question related to the content of this article using this form.