freenet-style transfers through multiple nodes are the future of filesharing [read: free exchange of data]. freenet, however, has a good number of issues that make it quite hard to use, and anyways, it was neither meant as a filesharing network nor is it mainly used as one. nevertheless gnutella could learn a lot of these secure transfers. would they slow down my downloads? certainly they would. but if i got the choice between speed and security, i would go for security.

the perfect P2P Network of the future would use gnutella's decentralized selfstructuring network model, error-tolerant information storage methods like kademlia and untraceable data transfers like those of freenet. ah yes, and public key cryptography because of them spooks that pay my isp to log all my traffic...arghs, i guess it's still a long way to go until we get there, but i have some hope left...

ps: Vinnie, good luck with your proprietary bearshare network, you're gonna need it...