In the wake of recent activities by the RIAA and MPAA, many P2P users are trying to find a more secure P2P application.
Just yesterday two of the oldest P2P vendors closed down due to legal threats from the RIAA lawyers.
After the fall of Napster P2P developers saw that it is very easy to shut down a network that is based on centralized server, so the next logical step was decentralized network pioneered by Kazaa.
Now when decentralized networks are not enough the next phase in the war to get free content is anonymous and secure networks.
Although currently there are many small networks that are trying to grab attention, they did not swap many followers (mostly because of their small size and lack of content). But that is going to change as more and more users are being sued.
To those of you who are looking for an anonymous and encrypted P2P network I’ve listed below some of the better known networks.
- FileTopia (Recommended)– One of the oldest encrypted file sharing networks around (not full anonymity)
- Freenet - Encrypted network that allows anything from building web sites to running file sharing application
- MUTE - Open source peer-to-peer network that provides easy search-and-download functionality while also protecting your privacy
- ANts P2P (Recommended) - ANts P2P Open source java based third generation P2P net.
It protects your privacy while you are connected and makes you not trackable, hiding your identity (ip) and crypting everything you are sending/receiving from others.
- Kdrive - Secure global virtual hard drive
- ProxyShare P2P - Using internet proxy servers to hide your IP
- WASTE - WASTE is a software product and protocol that enables secure distributed communication for small (on the order of 10-50 nodes) trusted groups of users.
Note: These networks are relatively small, compare to other non encrypted networks so do not expect to find large amounts of files there. But they are growing every day and probably one of them will reach the critical mass and will be the next file sharing king.
If you know of other good anonymous file sharing networks please write a comment to let other know.