Talking about this subject it's useful to make clear what are we trying to protect.
There are 3 different layers that can be distributed/centralized: 1) layer of contents -> what and where is/are the source(s) of information? Is it restricted to a company? is it public so that people can colaborate with each other? 2) layer of infrastructure -> what and where is the engine that supports the layer of contents? is it in one place? Is it in multiple places? Is it based on cloud computing? 3) layer of domain -> who is in charge? What organization has ownership and control of the layer of infrastructure? What rules and restrictions does that organization to comply (e.g.: national)? There are indeed many projects that work layer 1). The marketing guys (and not only) like to talk these apps web 2.0. When it comes to the layer 2) we are seeing a big movement towards technologies that support web applications (and not only) in a distributed way by many of the main players such as Facebook (with cloud computing). Still, even Facebook has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria, China and Iran, although Iran later unblocked Facebook in 2009. (quoted from Wikipedia) That is the limit that, I believe, Massimo is referring to. We can't write a software that changes governments that try to control the news but you can write a software that makes "impossible" for any government to control the news by not being based on the traditional controlling mechanisms (such as IP routes). There is a project called Netsukuku from an italian hacker in Python btw, that probably goes even beyond your idea. References: http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/ http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/2html/documentation/main_documentation/qspn.pdf http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/2html/documentation/main_documentation/topology.pdf http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/2html/documentation/main_documentation/ntk_rfc/Ntk_p2p_over_ntk.pdf Best Regards On Jul 19, 10:39 am, mdipierro <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jul 19, 4:27 am, Fran <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > On Jul 19, 12:49 am, mdipierro <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Another killer app I would like to see it this: > > > A p2p news app. > > > Imagine installing web2py and an app that allows you to select > > > keywords of interest. the app connect to other apps of the same tipe > > > via xmlrpc fetches recent news items that match your interests and > > > serves them locally. You can block individual news and/or post more > > > news. Visitors can comment and vote. Comments stay local but upvotes/ > > > downvotes affect propagation of the news. The layout could be > > > customizable. > > > I am very concerned about governments censoring information. This > > > system would create a worldwide news network without a central point > > > of failure. A particular item propagates as long as the readers find > > > it interesting. > > > Isn't this basically what social networks do already? > > No. Think of twitter. There is a server somewhere at twitter.com that > handles the twits. It is centralized. It worked in the case of Iranian > elections because it happens that that server is not in Iran. > > I am talking a real p2p network for news. To my knwoledge there is no > such a thing. > > Massimo > > > > > I see this very clearly with the current news on the Iranian post- > > election fallout: > > * News items pop up in all sorts of places (Traditional Broadcasters/ > > Blogs/Facebook/Twitter) > > * These get forwarded through all these diverse media again > > (including being shared in Google Reader) > > > I rather like this heterogeneous system as it provides for diverse > > routing. > > > The main issue with censorship here is the Nokia-Siemens DPI which > > needs to be avoided using tools like ToR or Haystack. > > > To get the p2p app to work effectively, many people would need to take > > it up. > > Again, the diverse interlinked routes we have already seem like less > > of an uphill struggle... > > > F --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "web2py-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/web2py?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
