uServ -- P2P Webserver from IBM

ryantate writes: "Some folks over at IBM have been working on the uServ Project, which provides "high availability web hosting ... using existing web and internet protocols", meaning you can serve a website from your desktop and people can get at it with a standard Web browser and without special software. They claim the system, which works from behind firewalls and when you are offline (provided you can convince other peers to 'replicate' your site), is in active use by about 900 people within IBM. Here's the white paper."

Piracy issues

[neksys]

It's a neat idea, but realistically, I can't imagine personal "This is my Cat" webpages will be propagated far enough for it to be worthwhile (assuming I'm reading it correctly). Unfortunately, as with many "neat ideas", the only used that will become widespread are be warez/mp3/movie/iso/etc. sites, illegitimizing (to some) the whole idea.

On the other hand, it may make it just that much harder for the MPAA, RIAA and co. to stop the spread of their property.

Re:No fair.

[Bi()hazard]

This is exactly the purpose of uServ-if you read through the documents written by uServ's designers, you'll see that this is intended to be web publishing for the masses. While many slashdot readers would host a site themselves, the average user can't do that. Hosts such as Geocities are corporate behemoths who have shown themselves ready to trample individual users whenever they find it convenient. IBM's visionaries hope to use the new resources available to home users-namely cable and dsl connections capable of moving around enough data to distribute sites-to implement an unregulated, power to the people version of Geocities.

Isn't this the entire purpose of the internet: a distributed, uncontrollable network allowing anyone to share information with anyone else? Don't be fooled by the scant description offered on the front page or any preconcieved notions about what distributed filesharing systems do. This isn't a client/server program like gnutella; it relies on basic internet protocols to use the dormant resources of clients as servers. Coordinating servers will be set up not only by IBM, but individual power users like the typical slashdotter-someone with a spare computer to use as a dedicated server, and enough knowledge to run it well. The dream of uServ's creators is nothing less than freeing the server side of the internet from the chains of money, nothing less than making web serving as cheap and easy as web browsing. Nothing less than the liberation of content from the hands of the powerful.

See for yourself in the document [ibm.com] by the researchers Bayardo, Somani, Gruhl, and Agrawal. Their ultimate vision is a system taken for granted by the end user in the same way DNS is now. A complex solution to a serious problem, but one so easy to use, effective, reliable, and hidden in the background that anything else is unimaginable to the end user. Think of what will be possible when we have a large, community driven, self-sufficient, unregulated section of the internet. Censorship will be impossible, even for restrictive nations such as China. Using its revolutionary peer-to-peer proxying technology uServ will be able to dynamically create tunnels and anonymous proxies as easily as it can create webpages. Today Napster can be shut down, but one million users in a hundred countries with most of their traffic completely legitimate cannot be stopped. Today political dissidents can be tracked by oppressive governments, but a distributed network with built-in anonymity and trail obfuscation created by dozens of cooperating users in different countries can guarantee anonymity. Today the internet can to a large extent be controlled by those with money and power-but a mature uServ would bring us close to realization of the internet's original vision, where everyone is equal.

Re:Sounds like a ripoff of Freenet

[scrytch]

> Just build an http server into the gnutella client
...
> Of course the thing is that nobody bothered to do so sofar.

BearShare [bearshare.com] does precisely this. It's marginally useful at times.