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BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship

April 13, 2004 - 5:18pm — Amke

Anonymous Patron shares this interesting story. . .

"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."

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April 13, 2004 - 5:42pm — Anonymous Patron (not verified)

Missing Something

as the old commercials used to say "You're soaking in it!"blogs are already doing this, using rss, and blogs, no other p2p apps are needed. I think he really missed the obvious.

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April 13, 2004 - 9:17pm — Daniel

Re:Missing Something - Not!

I don't think he missed anything. There are two reasons why I think of off the top of my head for my claim:1) Blogs, RSS and such reside on specific servers run by specific ISPs. These are vulnerable to gov't and corporate shutdowns. It happens all the time in China. With P2P technology, potentially every networked computer in the world (with P2P enabled) could have the potentially censored work on its machine. You couldn't cut off access to it without completely disabling Internet access, or at least entire port ranges which might affect other services.2) P2P is better for multimedia distribution, as RIAA and MPAA can tell us. Underground newscasts, amateur documentaries and so forth can zip across the P2P networks.I'm very sad to see the widespread suppression of P2P development, because it could become a useful tool to disidents in repressed countries. I realize it's also a tool of pirates and pornographers, but for the arnesnal of freedom, I want every available tool, and this includes P2P.

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