Chapter 9. Persistent and Anonymous Solutions

Reasons to encrypt content stored on the Internet can be many, but a dominant theme is the persistence of published information, and the ability to successfully resist all attempts to either remove or change data. Practical solutions that ensure data persistency are found in a p2p context because one of the best safeguards is to not have any centralized storage or administration that could be compromised.

By many advocates seen as the original, now subverted purpose of the Internet as a whole, distributed and encrypted p2p solutions such as Freenet are viewed as the vanguard of a new Internet paradigm that will once again make information and its expression free—fundamental rights available to everyone.

This area is controversial, however, with strong and vocal fractions on either side. The kind of absolute freedom implied here is anathema to governments and corporations alike, no matter how open and liberal they profess to be. The fact that freedom of exchange in digital media has come to be on a collision course with commercial intellectual property rights protection (of text, music, images, and so on) has simply exacerbated the problem very quickly.

Nevertheless, the subject of encrypted and secure storage in a p2p context is an important one. In this chapter, we especially examine Freenet as a focus application to discuss the issues relevant to the subject. We showcase it as an ambitious technology to implement one possible solution to adaptive storage—one that’s just begun to show promise as an enterprise solution as well.