Back in the netherdays of computing, each computer was generally quite powerful (in relative terms of the day). For example, there may have been a multitude of terminals which allowed you to log in to a main server. This server, when connected to the rather new system called “The Internet,” was a peer among peers. It, like most of the other computers connected to this Internet, was capable of serving content or services to any other computer connected to this worldwide network. Because personal computers (for use at home) had not yet taken off, and most computers were mainframes at large government or educational institutes, it wouldn’t have made any sense to disempower them, limiting their ability to serve as well as receive data over this enormous network. In modern terms, every computer was a node, a server, connected to the Internet. TCP/IP was designed to support this manner of networked computing, from Day One.
Today, the picture is not as bright. With the enormous popularity of personal computers, particularly the Windows operating system, it was ultimately up to Microsoft to decide how powerful individual personal computers would be. And because of the enormous popularity of Microsoft’s Windows, the precedents they set became effectively the industry standard. As is readily apparent in modern computing practices, the power that was originally maintained by mainframe computers became reserved for the big-boy servers. You all know who they are; these are the websites that you go to on a regular basis, such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Hulu, various news sites, and all of the others. Now, they have all of the power, and Microsoft Windows has become crippled in its abilities to serve content as computers are meant to do. They are indeed designed to disempower the end user. In fact, most of the time, it is directly against the license agreement for using Microsoft Windows to serve content to other computers. And when Microsoft is not limiting these abilities, companies such as Comcast (as an Internet Service Provider) explicitly prohibit the use of your home computer to perform functions currently reserved for large-scale companies.
What’s actually preventing you from hosting a website at home? Nothing. In my experience, people seem not to notice that they are disempowered in this way. They simply assume that “that’s the way it is,” and that “this the way it must be.” They use their computer’s web browser to surf the web as a spectator, not as a participant. They view their YouTube videos served from Google’s servers, and they play their Farmville games on Facebook servers. But what, truly, is to prevent you from creating a web site on your computer so that your friends can see your content, or download your files? In fact the Internet, as it was originally conceived, was designed so that you could do this, and relied on the fact that computers could serve other computers in much the same manner that these big-boy servers currently serve you.
So what does that make you? A so-called “client.” In this age of cloud computing, much of your data is no longer saved on your own computer, and you are no longer in direct control of this information. With sites such as Facebook, all of the information on your profile, all of the pictures you’ve uploaded, and all of the comments and messages you’ve posted to your friends, all of this data is somewhere “out there,” just out of reach until you log into the service.
It’s the same with your YouTube videos. Once you upload a video, should YouTube (Google) decide that it’s not up to snuff with their standards, or that it goes against some policy, they will remove it, likely without warning you. It’s the same with Facebook; if you go against some policy, or if Facebook believes that you have gone against some policy, they can remove all of the data you have spent years building, all of the networking you have invested your time in. Gone. Just like that. This is because they want that power. They like that power. And they don’t want you to have the same power.
I use Comcast as my home’s ISP. I don’t recommend that you do, if you like freedom. Comcast actually forbids that you use your computer to serve content to your friends. One of the big efforts of Comcast is to spy on your internet traffic, and if it sees something like Bittorrent running, it will throttle down your internet, preventing you from sharing files (which may be perfectly legal) with friends. Bittorrent is an Internet protocol that empowers you. it allows you to act like a server, downloading and uploading files to other computers that have or want the files that you possess. This gives you an enormous amount of power: you are actually serving data to other users of this vast Internet.
This is a power that they do not want you to have, for a number of reasons. The biggest reason, in my opinion, is that when you start serving content, they lose the power of policing the content that is accessed on the Internet. You’re not downloading it from YouTube or the iTunes store, which are nothing more than “servers” that they permit you to download from. You begin using the Internet without them: you are empowering yourself to become an active part of the Internet, instead of a passive, disempowered client.
Because of this, Bittorrent (and other similar protocols) are inherently resistant to censorship. As long as somebody has the data, not just some big-boy server, it can be shared and accessed by all. Another such system is known as Freenet. Freenet is much like the current Internet, but instead of a few ultra-powerful servers having all of the content, the content is distributed amongst every computer connected to the Freenet network. Think of it as an Internet that’s entirely separate from the rest of the Internet, served by all, accessed by any, and because of this, it is highly resistant to censorship. As long as somebody has the file, it can be downloaded or viewed. This is how the original Internet was designed, and this is, in my strong opinion, how the Internet should be.
One final way you can assert your digital freedom is by avoiding crippling software such as Microsoft Windows. GNU/Linux’s design was inspired by the original mainframes mentioned above, and because the software is free-as-in-freedom, those who design it want to give the user (that’s you!) as much power with your computer as possible. Why prevent a computer from performing a job that it’s highly capable of performing?
There’s much more to consider that I won’t go into detail about here, such as the importance of logs. Perhaps I will post again in the future discussing this and many other aspects of why the client-server system exists only to disempower you as a computer user, with no regard for actual Internet limitations. Let the Internet be everything it can!
