Greplaw interviews Ian Clarke

[SA_Dave]

Ian Clarke on Freenet and his Decision to Leave the USA

posted by mpawlo on Tuesday September 02, @01:12AM
from the freedom-fighters dept.

In a comment on Slashdot, Freenet creator Ian Clarke announced he has decided to leave the USA. Freenet is a 'A Distributed Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System' used by citizens of oppressive regimes to retreive information from all over the world. At the time of the announcement, it appeared Clarke made his decision following a former Intel engineer pleading guilty to Taliban aid. Greplaw has picked Ian Clarke's brain.

Well worth a read!

# Why did you decide to leave the U.S.?

Several reasons really. Firstly, because the work I am doing now doesn't really require me to be in any particular location, I could probably work from the North Pole if I had a fast Internet connection. Secondly, because I don't like living in a country where, as a non-citizen, I am considered less deserving of justice than American citizens. Thirdly, because I feel that the direction intellectual property is being taken in this country, such as with the DMCA and software patents, make innovation much more difficult and risky here, particularly in the P2P space. There are many things I like about the US, but it just doesn't make sense to be here any more.