The Dawn of the Distibuted Web
The weather is a-changing
the storms be shaking
The love that you take
is equal to the love you’re making
Here comes the sun little darling
here comes the sun
Robert del Naja
Everyone more or less Internet-literate saw this coming. Search engines and social networks messing with the users’ privacy, governments believing that it’s OK to wiretap the Internet, censor it or even block it altogether, big content lobbying for draconian copyright laws and believing that it can take entire sites down just because they use innovation to cut into their massive superprofits. The Internet hesitated for a while, believing that it could still come to terms with the armies of bureaucrats, lawyers and content producers, but in a while it became clear that all they are trying to do is to piggyback on the technological revolution, contributing as little as they can while trying to squeeze as much out of it as possible.
That’s why a massive trend shift towards a fully distributed Internet is all but unexpected. Users want to be in control of their info, thoughts, services and communications, and to decide for themselves about what tools they’re going to use and how to use them. All of this points to the plummeting level of regular users’ trust in any central authority, be it their government or their email provider.
Okay, so let’s consider that there’s this critical mass of people who stand for a total decentralization of the Internet. They come up with an idea that nobody in particular should be in charge of it. Instead, they have conceived the ‘Net as an egalitarian construct where every user will have the same rights and possibilities, that is where all users will be peers. This approach became known as peer-to-peer networking, or P2P.
The conceptual foundation being laid, we approach the technical side of this question — and that’s where it becomes very complicated. Technically, the ‘Net is like a Matryoshka doll, with a multitude of technologies simultaneously working within each other. While some of these are free and common and can be easily used by anyone to create their own networks, some services like DNS are centralized and controlled by a single authority. Besides, most higher-level services such as email, social networks and search are offered by centralized providers. And finally and most significantly, all parts of the Internet infrastructure are operated by private companies and lie under the jurisdictions of the respective nation-states, making the able to control or cut access to the Internet at any time.
Thus, a move towards a truly peer-centric Internet would require “liberation” of the technologies and services that are not controllable by the user, a truly difficult task, as we have just seen. But as history shows, nothing can stifle progress and innovation, especially when they are supported by enough people.
Although this process isn’t even nearing its completion as of today, there are already some great developments to be noted.
First of all, let’s say a word about the grandfather of all P2P technologies — BitTorrent. Powering such sites as Suprnova and The Pirate Bay, this protocol has basically started a serious war for free and uncontrollable file sharing and first brought up the whole distributed web discussion.
When the news broke about the looming new legislation allowing US authorities unilaterally (!!!) shut down many global domain names, the community started working on a distributed Domain Name System (DNS) alternative. The resulting project is called dot-P2P, and although it’s far from completion, it already looks very promising.
Search is one of the most used Internet services. Until recently, it’s been almost monopolized by a couple of centralized providers. Although all of them claim to have strict privacy policies and make their best efforts to ensure a great user experience, some users keep doubting about the safety of letting someone collect so much data about them. Besides, all corporations are legally obliged to respond to law enforcement requests. YaCy, a fully distributed search system, aims to solve at least some of these problems.
Nowadays, most regular users rely heavily on social networking and microblogging services for personal news and communications. Although some well-known SN sites are said to have greatly contributed to establishing democracy and even triggered a bunch of national revolutions, let’s face the fact that most of them are highly controlled and moderated. While there are many projects aiming to create alternative social networking services, the one that deserves the most attention is *Diaspora. While still at Alpha stage at the moment, it’s already very functional, and most importantly, 100% community maintained.
Yet another interesting development in this direction is a distributed file system called Tahoe-LAFS (Least Authority File System) which allows to create a resilient storage system for any kind of content, making the data available even if some of the servers go down. This could be used by services facing constant takedown threats from public and private parties alike.
The world’s banking and currency systems enjoy less and less trust by the year. In addition to this, such measures as transfer charges, duties and taxes hinder the free movement of funds across the globe. Users who don’t trust any particular bank or currency may use a P2P payment system like Bitcoin. Yet again, this software is available as a proof of concept, and it’s by no means ready for day-to-day use, so we wouldn’t recommend to converting all your money to BitCoins just yet. Remember that what we’re talking about here is trends.
Talking about P2P, we just couldn’t avoid saying a few words about such networks as Tor, I2P and Freenet. These are the so-called anonymity networks, meaning that they either conceal your outgoing IP address, provide untrackable sites within the network and more. However, before you decide to jump head first into these networks, beware of their limitations and vulnerabilities.
As we have said, the Internet is actually a set of interlocked technologies, each of which is vital to its operation. However, one of the most important things is the underlying infrastructure. Recent events show that certain authorities believe they have the power to cut off the entire Internet once they feel it’s going out of their control – for instance, governments would disable Internet access to whole countries. Then, none of the described services would work, no matter how sophisticated they were.
One of the possible ways to counter such “global cutoff” policy is a wireless mesh network, which are able to literally heal themselves after the failure of even the most crucial of their nodes. In such a network, even one participant with Internet access (in another country, for instance) is able to share it with everyone else. Wireless networks are more secure because it’s much harder to physically destroy their infrastructure or eavesdrop on them, but they still remain vulnerable to radio jamming attacks.
All of these services and technologies have the potential to enhance a regular user’s privacy, security and freedom on the web. They help users work without relying on any specific service or authority and less sensitive to their accidental downtime or arbitrary limitations. The distributed web will surely help overcome web censorship and persecution of those who dare to voice their opinion. It will allow its users to return to the Web’s founding values like equality, freedom of speech and absence of regulation.
We do understand that most of these technologies are currently nothing more than proof of concept, and that it would take years for them to reach the robustness and accessibility required for everyday use by anyone except a narrow circle of geeks. Let’s just hope that the weather changes fast enough.