As I understand it, this fails to advances the broader "searching for a problem" argument. And is actually addressing a problem others have tried to solve later.
re. copyright holders fierce opposition: Youtube might be a good counter to the suggested tragedy of the anticommons. And on the high seas, napster's rise and the continued success of torrents suggest legally is not a barrier to success in and of it's self. The article reasonably ties copyright to free software. opensource has done pretty well. [The article's link back to ycombinator referencing Xanadu's allergic reaction to opening the code is an interesting candidate for why we're not using the OS now. Too locked down to get the love and exposure it needed? Bonus recursive side note: "has never believed in FLOSS" links to hackernews, demonstrating both back and forward linking -- another counterpoint to the presented augments against Xanadu's impracticality ]
Its not your (quoted) claim, but it's worth being explicit. Freenet is as legal as facebook or twitter[0]. People do illegal stuff with crypography. But it's ostensibly a way to protect from authoritarian overreach. Which still seems like a problem in search of a solution.
[0]: https://freenet.org/about/faq/#is-it-legal-to-run-a-freenet-... > One example comes from U.S. law, used here for illustration rather than as a universal rule: 17 U.S.C. §512, part of the DMCA. It expressly addresses “transitory digital network communications” (automatic transmission, routing, and intermediate or transient storage) and “system caching” (certain automatic temporary storage of third-party material).