By Drew Wilson

Every few years, the idea of using anonymous networks pops up in discussion from time to time. Often, this is the result of some event such as the RIAA suing users en-masse or ISPs throttling certain protocols. The latest prediction comes from a a posting on Slashdot in which the author says that the rise of anonymous networks is inevitable. Drew Wilson examines some possible barriers as to why it might not be so inevitable.

Let me first start off by saying that I’ve been actively around file-sharing discussions since at least 2005. I’ve passively watched these debates for longer, but if you want a hardcore date that I started participating in the debates, it’s about 2005. During that time, I’ve seen discussions surrounding anonymous networks crop up from time to time. I’ve seen people trying to propose file-sharing service “Ants” which actually suffered from some security vulnerabilities, Darknet networks, iP2P software, Freenet, Retroshare, the rise of Private BitTorrent websites and, of course, the increasing use of VPNs. Save for some adoption of Retroshare and an increasing interest in VPN, non of the above really took off compared to vanilla BitTorrent adoption and cyber lockers.

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