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Write a killer file-sharing application

The title essentially says it all. Freenet would increase notably in popularity if it could be used to reliably and efficiently share files. This would at a minimum entail (a) a good search engine and (b) a mechanism to preserve the integrity of files. The latter could either be reinsertion of missing blocks by seeders, or simply removing files from the search results when they lose their integrity.

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    anonymousanonymous shared this idea  ·   ·  Admin →
    planned  ·  toadAdmintoad (Admin, Freenet Project Inc.) responded  · 

    It is very far from easy to determine whether a file will be available without requesting it. Any mechanism which allows this will open up new attack vectors. However, infinity0’s work on searching is well on the way towards a distributed, spam-resistant WoT-based search engine suitable for filesharing. Spam is a big problem on all filesharing networks, hence the centralised forum-based tracker sites; we may be able to reproduce something like that, but anonymous.

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      • AnonymousAnonymous commented  · 

        adnan baloch

      • Realm0xFFreedomRealm0xFFreedom commented  · 

        It would be great if meta-tags in Thaw could be searched.
        e.g. "meta-author:Beatles" or "meta-type:movie"
        If meta data could be displayed with search result, like in Amazon, then freenet would enormously increase in popularity.
        e.g. showing the cover image, author, pages and etc. of a ebook file/container

      • muratmurat commented  · 

        uiiy

      • muratmurat commented  · 

        ettrw

      • juztrainjuztrain commented  · 

        By the way the facilities and utilites needed for the creation of such substances as a free collection of books, etc.

        You need to create some kind of _unified platform_ to build on its base many already known services, utilities and resources...

      • juztrainjuztrain commented  · 

        Yes, you really need a torrent and wikileaks analogs. This will give a stunning increase in popularity and _effectiveness_ of Freenet. Sorry for my bad English...

      • EveEve commented  · 

        This is the thing that would make Freenet used by the masses. A Built in "p2p" application other than Frost would make all the difference in the world.

      • toadAdmintoad (Admin, Freenet Project Inc.) commented  · 

        We are working on it. Hopefully there will be significant improvements this summer, one student will be working on stuff close to this. Searching is far more difficult than it sounds when you consider that anything that can be spammed/DoS'ed on Freenet will be, let alone scaling issues.

      • PeterPeter commented  · 

        I love the idea of a good P2P-system over Freenet. I tried Thaw but it seems to be not clear enough with all the indexes and meta-tags. Just give me a search system like frost....... Without the board and all discussion.
        I also would like to align the search results with the latest files on top. Or search on the poster. And I also like to block files whith particulair words in it.

      • toadAdmintoad (Admin, Freenet Project Inc.) commented  · 

        I am very skeptical of reinsert on demand. It really shouldn't be necessary on a largish network - which we have - and it has serious security issues. And IMHO it should be possible to *greatly* improve freenet's data persistence i.e. make files last a lot longer.

      • ju.riju.ri commented  · 

        i would suggest these features for a filesharing client:
        - insert only on demand. this would greatly reduce the mass insertion and reinsertion of stuff that people just want to "keep available"
        - client automatically inserts lists of available files (with some sort of date stamp). these lists are the base for searches. lists stay under the hood tho. no need to bother the user with any "list handling"
        - easy sharing of "watched" local directories. changes are detected and inserted as list updates. give the choice to include directory names in the published data for search
        - reinsert, insert and heal requested files on demand

        freemulet does most of this now, but it doesnt use the nodes built-in file handling, which is bad: you lose healing and other great features. also I'm not so sure about freemulet's security (?)

        thaw does some of this now, but: inserting of fileslists has to be done manually and is VERY complicated. lists are static. no insert or reinsert on demand, resulting in mass insertion of unwanted files. but uses freenet's great built-in filehandling.

        actually my dream would be a freemulet client that uses freenet's smart internal file handling, including healing, and some improvements to sharing and search.

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