Freedom Box: Freeing the Internet one Server at a time

[ Thanks to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]

"Free software isn't about free services or beer, it's about intellectual freedom. As recent episodes such as censorship in China, the Egyptian government turning off the Internet, and Facebook's constant spying, have shown, freedom and privacy on the Internet are under constant assault. Now Eben Moglen, law professor at Columbia University and renowned free software legal expert, has proposed a way to combine free software with the original peer-to-peer (P2P) design of the Internet to liberate users from the control of governments and big brother-like companies: Freedom Box.

"In a recent Freedom in the Clouds speech in NYC, Moglen explained what he sees as the Internet's current problems and his proposed solution. First, here's the trouble with the Internet today as Moglen sees it:

"[6:13] "It begins of course with the Internet. Designed as a network of peers without any intrinsic need for hierarchical or structural control and assuming that every switch in the net is an independent free standing entity who's volition is equivalent to the human beings who control it … But it never really worked out that way.""

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