Is It Possible to Build an Internet So Decentralized That It’s Beyond the Government’s Reach? BitTorrent is Going to Try.

Exciting news from BitTorrent:

It started with a simple question. What if more of the web
worked the way BitTorrent does?

Project Maelstrom begins to answer that question with our first
public release of a web browser that can power a new way for web
content to be published, accessed and consumed. Truly an Internet
powered by people, one that lowers barriers and denies gatekeepers
their grip on our future. 

The
announcement is more of a manifesto than an actual explanation,
but it’s easy to extrapolate the basic details.

BitTorrent is a protocol that uses a peer-to-peer network for
file sharing. It allows users to collect data in bits and pieces
off the hard drives of others users instead of downloading files
directly from a central server.

A Web browser built with BitTorrent could load pages by drawing
information from other people who’ve already visited the same
websites and automatically saved some of the information, instead
of going straight to the source. So when users log on to Reason.com
in the future, they’ll be pulling different little pieces of
data—text, pictures, ads—from millions (billions!) of other users
instead of straight off of our server.

An obvious benefit is speedy browsing. With Project Malestrom,
blockbuster stories at Reason.com wouldn’t affect download speeds
because users wouldn’t all at once be trying to access the same
server.

Project Malestrom could also help unclog the Internet’s
pipes—muting the debate over net neutrality and denying Washington
justification for “fucking
up the Internet“—because BitTorrent has an elegant system of
prioritizing data flows called “Micro Transport Protocol.”

“It’s the best example we have of technology being used to solve
what is perceived to be a policy problem,” BitTorrent CEO Eric
Klinker
told Fast Company when asked about its Micro Transport
Protocol. “It’s only through the technology that the Internet’s
rules are written.”

But here’s what I find most exciting about Project Maelstrom: If
the Web is distributed over a vast decentralized network,
governments have no way to control what people do and say online.

Sending in men with guns to pull a server offline is a waste of
time if the data on that server is duplicated on billions of
computers dispersed around the globe.

This technology could also supercharge projects like OpenBazaar, a decentralized
e-commerce platform in which home computers act as nodes in a vast
free trade network that nobody controls. And it seems like a first
step towards the dream of a “mesh network,”
in which the Internet has no trunk pipes and every computer is
simply linked to another computer, creating a network so dispersed
that no central authority could control or destroy it.

H/T: Mr. Knuckle of NXT
FreeMarket.