On 10 May 2001, Mr.Bad wrote:
> If we consider this a hostile act, we need to seriously rethink this
> entire enterprise. If Napster (e.g.) or alt.binaries.pictures.erotica
> are any indication, we will have VASTLY REDUNDANT DATA in Freenet. The
> case where two people try to insert the same song with the same
> bitstream is going to be much less common than two people trying to
> insert the same song with DIFFERENT bitstreams. Why even worry about
> the first case, if we can't handle the second?
But Freenet isn't Napster or Usenet, it's more like the WWW.
* Usenet is ephemeral, so reposts of popular data are essential.
* Napster is not a publication medium where an exact piece of data can
be reliably found. (You get what happens to be saved on some user's
disk under a similar name.) There's no "insertion".
Ideally Freenet will progress towards One True Catalog of data, and the
problem of redundant data will disappear. I don't see any compelling
reason why the merging of catalogs would not occur.
The critical question here is whether preventing redundancy in files under
the 128K splitting threshold is worthwhile, right here and now.
How about a compromise! We'll MANDATE the content-encoding and
content-type fields by removing them from ordinary metadata and putting
them in as standard values before the data, like:
<(2 bytes) content-encoding><(2 bytes) content-type><data>
Everybody knows these two (the content-encoding is the NONE value unless
the Freenet client is expected to decode the data itself, as in compressed
HTML pages).
And almost nobody needs any more metadata! (Those who do are free to put
it in normally, too. Few clients will, so the load will be insignificant.)
So the browser people get their content type and content encoding (read:
compression), we avoid inserting the "basic" metadata in many
non-colliding permutations, and those who really need more are free to add
it.
Hrm. Then again, it might not be worth the trouble.
--
"...it must be held that third-party electronic monitoring, subject
only to the self-restraint of law enforcement officials, has no place
in our society..." Mark Roberts | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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