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In other words, users collaboratively share free hard drive space for information storage and retrieval. How does Freenet work?įreenet works by storing encrypted data in nodes across multiple machines. The main goal of the Freenet project is to provide anonymity and censorship resistance. The Freenet software also lets you anonymously share files, create and publish free sites, and chat on forums that are only discoverable via Freenet. Simply put, Freenet is a free and decentralized peer-to-peer platform specifically designed to be anonymous and free from censorship. While this paper wasn’t published, it provided the framework for another paper that Clarke collaborated with other researchers on, which was published in 2001: “ Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System ”.Īfter receiving a B for his original paper, Clarke released his work online where it was disseminated and discussed by a group of peers and volunteers, and the software born from this eventually became known as Freenet. In 1999, Ian Clarke, a computer science and artificial intelligence student at University of Edinburgh, submitted his final year project, a report titled “ A Distributed, Decentralized Information Storage and Retrieval System ”.
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