Ian Clarke's peer-to-peer debate

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
May 6, 2002, 8:30 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-899662.html

snip.

CNET News.com recently talked to Clarke about Freenet and the continuing
peer-to-peer debates.

Q: The landscape has changed considerably since you started the project,
both in terms of legal rulings and the other types of programs people are
using. Do you see the need for Freenet as strong as it ever was?

A: I think more so. Freenet was very much a thought experiment initially.
It was what would happen if the Internet ever came under significant
attack from powerful organizations or government. One of the interesting
things is, that theory has repeatedly become reality.

When I was first dreaming up Freenet, I never thought a software engineer
would be jailed for writing a piece of software that let people read PDF
documents. I never thought the Digital Millennium Copyright Act would be
enforced in the way that it is. I never thought that senators would be
proposing bills that would mandate digital rights management (DRM)
technology in all computers--effectively, in my view, crippling all
computers...

--end--