[Reader-list] freenet

[Monica Narula]

Excerpted from an email on another list, called cITy speak. Thank you 
Phillip for sending that to me.

A comment on freenet.

the freenet/gnutella/filesharing system design accessible from freeware
such as Limewire, Furi, Gnutella and other such client software programs
is rewriting copyright and re-adressing perhaps the initial purpose of
copyright which was to free information from the controlling hands of a
greedy few central agencies, i.e. the church and the
military(early)industrial complex.

it works by replacing a central server with potentially incriminating
logs concerning who and what was involved in the transfer of information
via filesharing client software that turns every client (consumer) into
a server (provider) at the same time. a search is begun by a client and
results are listed as addresses of other persons connected to the
filesharing system. downloading a search result means sealing a
connection between the searcher's machine address and the private
address of the other client-turned-server who has the requested file at
their machine address. once that connection is up, no one can look
inside and only the two consenting parties know what and who is
involved.

mp3 audio files are to music as a blurry newspaper image is to a silver
photographic print. mp3 is a poor reproduction and should not subvert
the fair recompense to an artist for their work, that is if the
filesharing user has ears. in fact, some persons have developed allergies
to mp3 and get headaches trying to create music from the digital and
compressed sound in mp3 files.
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net