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Right now there is not a lot of incentive for the "average" user to install Tor, Freenet or any other de-centralized to make such a network popular commonplace.

But if pirated bay or other popular torrent sites started telling people that for direct downloads they can use this ONE particular software and assuming the software is easy to use (as compared to the fake Usenet software scams) a ton of people would download and install such software in a jiffy and when enough people do it (for whatever their reason be - free internet, file sharing, etc) we get a free internet developing side-by-side which the govt. can't seize.

The software is free and anonymous (unlike Napster, Limewire which can be shutdown) and is easy to use for the avg. user. So while sharing files like uTorrent could be the main feature, it will also give options to add a local DNS resolver (that does not depend on the root servers), and a custom web server (to host mirrors of sites). I'm sure millions of people are running uTorrent but just imagine if those same people were running this software instead of it!



The other question is how well some of those tools would scale if everyone were using them.


If it is a peer to peer network I believe it would get more robust as more people join in. Plus, if a ton of people are using it then it would reduce the bandwidth and load of each node if I understand correctly.


That is completely dependent on whether or not each person is consuming more than they are providing.


Unlike with most torrent programs, Tor by default sets up as a client but not as an exit node.

I don't know that I'd want to be an exit node for Tor, given some of the things that people use Tor for.


You can be a node without necessarily being an exit node.


I am in the Netherlands. As it so happens, the pirate bay actually told me a few days ago to install Tor or a private VPN, because my ISP would supposedly block them soon.


So, we should be secretly supporting SOPA?


Would you care to elaborate how this would support SOPA?


The more they crack down, the more "darknets" become popular, the pirates win and my newsfeed gets clogged with something else.




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