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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