Well. I was halfway through writing up a few thoughts on private p2p networks like Freenet, then the Guardian published this piece (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet) – followed by Freenet’s creator posting this slight rebuttal (http://blog.locut.us/main/2009/11/25/the-guardian-writes-about-freenet.html).

So I guess I’ll let them fill you in!

Suffice to say that the Guardian article should be taken with a healthy dose of NaCl. It reads like quite a sensationalist piece. Much of the “Dark Web” they talk about are things like company Intranets and non-public social networking sites (your facebook profile for non friends for instance). It’s not all scary Russians and kiddie fiddlers. The readers that are shocked by the ‘hidden’ Internet tend to be those that don’t really know what the Internet comprises in the first place.

Still, if you want to see what the Internet looked like 10-15 years ago  – fire up a copy of Freenet and browse around. It’s a good project that deserves a little more positive publicity.