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[FYI] The Value of Gnutella and Freenet
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- Subject: [FYI] The Value of Gnutella and Freenet
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>
- Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 20:18:41 +0100
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http://www.webreview.com/pub/2000/05/12/platformindependent/index.html
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The Value of Gnutella and Freenet
[...]
If you check my biography, you will see that I make my living selling
content. I do not extend knee-jerk sympathy to systems publicized as
ways to circumvent copyright enforcement. But investigating Gnutella,
Freenet, and Napster, I have been pleasantly surprised to find that
they're intriguing innovations in the best tradition of the Internet
heroes. While it's important to talk about their potential for the
distribution of illegal content, we have to start with their larger
goals and the promise they offer.
The title of this essay contains a hidden message. There are
important areas where Gnutella and Freenet have value, but there are
also areas where they don't offer much value. The area where all the
fears are being spawned—the distribution of illegal, defamatory, or
copyright-infringing material—is actually not a big danger, according
to my analysis. I'll return to this controversial conclusion after I
describe the two systems.
[...]
The Next Stage in Search Engines
One of the most worrisome developments on the Web is the inadequacy
of existing search tools to work in an era when Web sites depend
increasingly on database queries and dynamically-generated temporary
URLs. Many sites have their own sophisticated searches, but you have
to visit the site and enter the string manually (or study the site's
HTML form and write a customized LWP script—in any case, you have to
narrow your search to that single site). Data is generated
dynamically for each query. There is no way for a search engine to
find the information during a Web crawl, because no URL even exists
until the user queries the database. In short, users never find many
sites that have the information they want.
Gnutella offers the path forward. It governs how sites exchange
information, but says nothing about what each site does with the
information. A site can plug the user's search string into a database
query or perform any other processing it finds useful. Search engines
adapted to use Gnutella would thus become the union of all searches
provided by all sites. A merger of the most advanced technologies
available (standard formats like XML for data exchange, database-
driven content provision, and distributed computing) could take the
Internet to new levels.
Is the Genie No Longer a Dream?
A government could theoretically shut down all computers within its
jurisdiction that run a Gnutella or Freenet site, and could force
routing points to filter out packets from Gnutella or Freenet sites
outside its jurisdiction. Some countries have pretty good success at
screening unwanted sites. (Mostly countries with small populations
and minimal Internet penetration, like Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.) So-
called democratic governments could try to do the same on the grounds
that the sites are guilty of contributory and vicarious copyright
infringement, as the Recording Industry Association of America claims
in its suit against Napster. Even the software itself could be
suppressed on the grounds that its primary purpose is to overcome
copyright restrictions; that's how a notorious Copyright Act clause
is being used against DeCSS.
But to do so would be a crying shame. Gnutella and Freenet have much
to offer; in addition to the search possibilities already mentioned,
they distribute information in a way that offers an intriguing
alternative to the heavy, expensive, overly centralized servers that
characterize the Web at present. The data propagation model used by
Freenet, in which data spreads out in unusual and surprising patterns
like the classic computer game of Life, is a model well worth
studying.
Ian Clarke, creator of Freenet, is pretty sure the genie is out of
the bottle. "If I don't release Freenet, the copyrighted information
will get out eventually. Maybe Freenet will make it happen a little
faster, but it should serve as a wake-up call." And Gene Kan says,
"Copyright holders have encountered waves of new technologies over
the decades; they've started by fighting every one and ended by
reaping even bigger profits from the new technologies than before.
Every week that the RIAA spends trying to get rid of things like
Napster is a big wasted opportunity for it to capitalize on this
method of distribution."
Would you get Free Content from Napster, Gnutella, or Freenet?
The spread of MP3 files, and their centrality to Napster, skew the
debate over free and copyrighted content. Lots of people are willing
to download free music files from strangers, because if they find out
that the sampling quality is lousy or the song breaks off halfway
through, nothing has been lost. They can go back to Napster and try
another site.
Matters would be entirely different if you tried to get free software
from strangers, especially in binary form. You'd never know whether a
Trojan Horse was introduced that, two years later, would wipe your
hard disk clean and send a photo of a naked child to the local police
chief. (And you thought UCITA's self-help provision was as bad as it
could get!)
True, people get binary software or "warez" from unauthorized sources
already, but they often have a pre-existing relationship with the
person putting up the software. Ironically, they can trust the
unauthorized software precisely because it is copyrighted and
available only in binary form; malicious people would find it
extremely difficult to patch it so that it can still run but produce
deleterious effects on the user (unless those malicious people are
angry manufacturers--will we start to experience this kind of self-
help from vendors?)
The gist of this section is to counter John Perry Barlow's famous
phrase "Information wants to be free" with the somewhat less well-
known reply, "Information wants to be valuable." When software comes
from anonymous sources—unless you obtain and read the source code—its
value drops to nearly nothing.
Let's take a more meritorious example: a human rights observer who
posts a long list of crimes committed by the Pinochet regime in
Chile, along with precise descriptions of how military leaders were
implicated in each crime. If the observer wants to remain anonymous,
it will be hard to trust this report, but sometimes internal details
can convince trained experts that a report is genuine. Still, nothing
prevents the implicated military leaders from flooding a system like
Gnutella or Freenet with altered versions of the report that are
plausible enough to cause confusion and raise doubts about which
version is the real one. Unless digitally signed and traceable, such
a report will have little value.
In short, anonymity is the enemy of reliability. Anonymity is
valuable for many purposes, such as in support groups for the victims
of abuse; it is also a shield for distributing certain types of
content where reliability doesn't matter. Gnutella and Freenet could
therefore be sources for pornography and for copyrighted music or
movies. But people who care about quality will choose identifiable
sources.
We need systems like Gnutella and Freenet. They are not only
legitimate objects for research, but solutions to certain technical
problems arising on the Internet. When did we start to fear the
future so much that we subject such innovations to calumny?
Andy, andyo@oreilly.com, is an editor at O'Reilly & Associates and
moderator of the Cyber Rights mailing list for Computer Professionals
for Social Responsibility. This article represents his views only.
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