Yup, because there's no such thing as multi volume rar archives.. OK, flippancy aside, the main point I was making is that if you're going to share files with only a small number of people there's not much need for new technologies, any number of existing ones that can support some form of encryption will do just as well.

Private darknets are a step backwards, IMO. At the one end you could have a large number of small networks between people who trust each other very well, but are limited in the size of the shared pool of material. At the other end you have less trusted large networks with a more material, but still nowhere near as large the entire internet, thus you would often not be able to find what you want. And the larger a network is, the less you are likely to trust everyone on it and the more vulnerable it is to infiltration. Even a small network could be compromised by someone who decided to betray all of their 'friends' (not necessarily out of malice).

'Breaking into the scene' of private darknets is diffcult for anyone who doesn't have pre-existing, probably real-world contacts (much like having ready access to good drugs, it might be easy for kids in a college environment, not so much for your average person). And at the end of the day, if you are going to limit your file sharing activities with a few people you know, you might as well just use email.

For a true culture of free information exchange, we need to look to systems that anyone with a connection and the right software can access and preferably search. This is far more technically challenging, and due to the measures taken to preserve anonymity, usually less convenient than what we are currently used to. But this will improve in due course. Tor, Freenet, I2P and others like them are the future, not walled gardens.

I don't think you're giving the 'great unwashed masses' enough credit. There must be plenty who don't identify themselves as geeks or nerds, yet would jump at the chance to learn how store bought gadgets can be subverted and repurposed for their own ends, it's cool and useful. When people see a club where you get to make little plastic egg cups with flashing LEDs, sorry but it doesn't have quite the same impact. Don't mean to be harsh, that might be the tip of the iceberg of what these places are capable of, but I'm calling it how I see it.

These places and the publicity they send out (the one in the article is a prime example) usually have far too much emphasis on making tacky trinkets and other useless shit, no mention of projects that a wider selection of people would actually consider interesting. Where are the workshops on (for example) rooting your phone or PC firmware, building a rocket or UAV, a home made wifi receiver etc. I'm not saying they have to go out fo the way to choose things guaranteed to get them sued or arrested.

There is far too much technology in danger of being seen as only the business of big corps and terrorists, the more people who accept dabbling in it as an acceptable hobby, the harder it will be to make it illegal to dabble in it in the future. Choose ambitious, useful and above all inspiring projects, the more chance you have of getting the attention of people other than 'mouth breathing nerds'.

As opposed to the governments who, in this age, don't at least aspire to do exactly that? This test of new technology isn't just relevant to Iran, you know. Even if you think you live in a relatively free 'western' country, future developments in these kinds of tools are a damn sight more important to you than you appear to realise.

A miniature friendly crab attacks the tumours weak spot for MASSIVE DAMAGE

Your're not thinking outside the box enough. The most resilient place to host this material would be on a constellation of (relatively) cheap, redundant micro satellites. While the technology surely exists to destroy these, it is still in its infancy and would be prohibitively expensive to deploy repeatedly (not to mention the fact that the smaller the target, the harder it is to track and hit). There are continuing improvements in low cost ways of getting things into orbit so I can see space become part of the theater of the war for information freedom.

The battle for freedom of the centralised, unencrypted internet is being lost (after the writing being on the wall for decades), everyone who really cares is moving to more hardened, resilient methods of communication. I've seen more increase in activity on freenet, etc in the last 2 or 3 years, than ever.

Hear me out, there might be something that can be done about this..

It's not often these days I have any faith in protest actions by the general public having any meaningful impact, but to me this incident is just crying out for some action to at least cause the waste of oxygen who brought the lawsuit some hassle, and hopefully make anyone else considering similar actions think twice. What needs to happen is for as many people as possible to take the same photograph on their cameras and upload to image sites, forums, wherever, with a link or explanation included. Ideally, someone would host a website containing the explanation people can link to (no need to actually host any images there and make oneself a DMCA magnet). The uniqueness original work will become so diluted as to be worthless, awareness of this bullshit ruling would be spread, and there's no way you take down all the 'infringing' images.

Except it doesn't. I'd like to see someone try firing a rifle made of the glorified Play Doh most of these 3D printers are capable of working with. At the moment and probably for the foreseeable future, the affordable models can only print toys and other stuff that doesn't have to take very much physical abuse.

Why doesn't it show the unemployment rate and graduate income of maths/economics/medicine majors? Can someone point me to the mythical land where engineering majors have the highest likely income, as this article seems to be suggesting.