Indeed, the EFF and several news sites are already predicting an oncoming crackdown. What I have tried to demonstrate in this article are the consequences of some innovative Internet developments for anonymity and tracking. Freenet is only a harbinger of a general trend toward distributing content in such a way that it has no identifiable source, no fixed location, and no predictable reader. Current laws and emerging legal precedents clash with the new technology. Laws and precedents in the field of intellectual property try to stifle the distribution of content by requiring every system user to be responsible for what is on his or her system.
Surveillance assumes that law enforcement can pinpoint and track the location of suspects.
The status of Freenet and other distributed file systems is ambiguous under these regimes. Nor is their status likely to improve as the extent of their challenge becomes better known. While I don't presume to think that policy-makers and legislators internationally will read this article, they will eventually find out what kinds of protection distributed file systems offer to the people they are trying to spy on. The restrictions already in place will probably be strengthened and clarified to exclude the use of the new systems. Thus, those interested in the continual improvement and democratic spread of useful technology should prepare for a fight.