We need to conceptualize a true peer to peer network.
There might serve, as a Free Republic 'coordinator', a fat-client application that resides on your computer. It is not a server. Each equipotent node would distribute messages and threads to other nodes. The Free Republic experience could never be the same between any two nodes, since messages and threads would come in to your computer in different orders.
JimRob would maintain a secured protocol which would allow him and other moderators to send 'kill message' and 'block user' messages, allowing moderation.
Otherwise things would be the same. It would be up to the application to render things in the same look and feel.
While it would be possible for the Feds to identify and raid each FR user, it would be a daunting task often involving significant physical resistance.
The reason why I suggest a Fidonet-like protocol vice peer-to-peer IP is that Fidonet can be used completely “off the grid” as it were. Connections are dependent upon analog phone calls from point a to point b in order to transfer message traffic. The phone numbers associated with point a or point b are also completely at random, since it is inherently an asynchronous network. Peer-to-peer networking, while it has the security of being M:N, still runs on the Internet, so there is the ability to perform traffic analysis. Unless, of course, a fairly large onion router network is set up.
“We need to conceptualize a true peer to peer network.”
Or a series of mirrored servers around the world using some kind of redundant “cloud” setup, somewhat like Amazon’s EC2 or Rackspace Cloud but hosted outside the US, for the most part.
There is a Canadian website inspired by FR called Free Dominion. They moved their servers to Panama, which has strict privacy laws, to escape free speech censorship.
Great post, Laz.