(I was a curious teenager and followed links I shouldn't have.) It had a ~1998 web feel. So you would mostly discover things by surfing around. Normal content would take ages to load or didn't load at all. (Bad distribution, because no-one had interest in it.) While the other stuff would load faster than AmpLand. (Very good distribution, because lots of demand.)

Plus: There was a eDonkey like file sharing program that worked on top of freenet. (As well as a Usenet clone and a "Instant" Messenger.) You could share files without uploading them first. Like Gnutella it had passive search. (It shows you the files and search terms of other users going through your system.) So you could see what the demand was for. Edit: The demand was not for Hollywod movies.