File-sharing to bypass censorship

The BBC ^ | 2004/04/09 08:25:09 GMT | Tracey Logan

[FreedomCalls]

By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind.

This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, Cambridge University's Professor Ross Anderson.

In his vision, people around the world would post stories via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs.

They would cover issues currently ignored by the major news services, said Prof Anderson.

"Currently, only news that's reckoned to be of interest to Americans and Western Europeans will be syndicated because that's where the money is," he told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital.

"But if something happens in Peru that's of interest to viewers in China and Japan, it won't get anything like the priority for syndication.

"If you can break the grip of the news syndication services and allow the news collector to talk to the radio station or local newspaper then you can have much more efficient communications."

'Impossible to censor'

To enable this, Prof Anderson proposes a new and improved version of Usenet, the internet news service.

But what of fears that the infrastructure that allows such ad hoc news networks to grow might also be abused by criminals and terrorists?

Prof Anderson believes those fears are overstated. He argued that web watchdogs like the Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors internet-based child abuse, would provide the necessary policing functions.

This would require a high level of international agreement to be effective.

"The effect of peer-to-peer networks will be to make censorship difficult, if not impossible," said Prof Anderson.

"If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography, then it's possible to track it down and close it down. But if there's material that only one government says is wicked then, I'm sorry, but that's their tough luck".

Political obstacles

Commenting on Prof Anderson's ideas, technology analyst Bill Thompson welcomed the idea of new publishing tools that will weaken the grip on news of major news organisations.

Such P2P systems, he said, would give everybody a voice and allow personal testimonies to come out.

But the technology that makes those publishing tools accessible to everyone and sufficiently user-friendly will take longer to develop than Prof Anderson thinks, added Mr Thompson.

Prof Anderson's vision underestimates the political obstacles in the way of such developments, he said, and the question of censorship had not been clearly thought through.

"Once you build the technology to break censorship, you've broken censorship - even of the things you want censored," said Mr Thompson.

"Saying you can then control some parts of it, like images of child abuse, is being wilfully optimistic. And that's something that peer to peer advocates have to face."

[FreedomCalls]

There is already such a P2P network -- it's called "FreeRepublic"! Even as they try to censor our access to news -- Free Republic is there.

[GeronL]

Will FR ever go p2p??

[LibKill]

There is already such a P2P network -- it's called "FreeRepublic"! Even as they try to censor our access to news -- Free Republic is there.

I rely heavily on FR for news. I get truth here.

[AlbertWang]

It will be killed by trolls..........

[LibKill]

It will be killed by trolls..........

Trolls have tried and trolls have been Zotted, and FR is still here.

[DannyTN]

The internet has broken the stranglehold the major media has. More and more people are becoming aware of it.

However the problem with the internet is too much information. Therefore you need places like freerepublic where you can go to.

People will probably gravitate to the type of "spin" they want to hear. But all in all, I expect reporting will become more factual and balanced not less.

[plsjr]

I guess you're referring to Jim's post "More copyright complaints".

I'm wondering if we take up using "eMule Plus", Peer to Peer software available at http://emuleplus.sourceforge.net and establish an online community using capabilities like Community Sharing, Countermeasures against unfair clients, Source Filters, Queue Filters, etc. as mentioned in the comprehensive list of features would be a way to overcome the censorship and maintain the wonderful FreeRepublic archives?

I stumbled across this evening and it was too much of a coincidence not to mention.

[AlbertWang]

Trolls are killed by the mods, in true P2P there are not mods.

You'll be seeing stories about masonic conspiracies, Contrails, Jack Ruby, Faked moon landings.......... OK, nothing changes.

[plsjr]

Hmmm. please replace the 'this' in my last paragraph with 'eMule Plus this' -

anxiousness sometimes overcomes proofreading discipline.

:<

[FreedomCalls]

Will FR ever go p2p??

There's lots of FreepMailing going on behind the scenes that you may not know about.

[GeronL]

I always get left out *sniff* /jk

[Free2Be49]

I don't understand how this P2P works. Is it a special software? How can it be used to share news stories? How does it maintain our private information?

[DentsRun]

I don't understand why a P2P network is an advantage over what we have today. Much of what we currently find on the internet is uncensored. Look at the blog sites. People say pretty much whatever they want and you can read what they post and decide for yourself. Or is the point that there is some control over the blog sites. And with P2P, there wouldn't even be that?

[DentsRun]

I rely heavily on FR for news. I get truth here.

Well we all do. But even FR is censored. On a couple of occasions in the recent past I tried to post what I thought were really interesting stories only to discover they camed from banned sites.

[GOPJ]

But what of fears that the infrastructure that allows such ad hoc news networks to grow might also be abused by criminals and terrorists?

Or PR firms...

[Jim Robinson]

Bump

[Glenn]

No banners or spam on FR hurrah bump.

The way to read the news.

[I_dmc]

Interesting concept. When you consider what Bit Torrent is, one can imagine millions of Bit Torrent engines plodding anonymously forwarding news everywhere on the globe. Bit Torrent is a massively parallel engine that uses as many "servers" as it can find to do P2P. I loaded it to download the free Lindows Live CD.