The Irish creator of software that could shake up the global music industry by allowing the anonymous swapping of millions of music files has announced that he is ready to release his invention within months.
Ian Clarke (28), originally from Meath, has been name-checked everywhere from the Washington Post to MTV this week after he announced at two Las Vegas computer conferences that he is almost ready to release his Freenet software to the public.
The software will allow users to share files over the internet in a way that cannot be monitored by governments or music corporations.
The software uses a concept known as "darknet", in which a global network can be created that hides information on the type of files being shared by the user.
The New York Times devoted a 1,300-word article to Mr Clarke's idea this week, as the US grapples with a June Supreme Court decision which effectively shut down internet sites designed to allow users to illegally share music files.
However, Mr Clarke's Freenet may be outside the Supreme Court's reach, as it is not primarily designed to share illegally copied files.
A crude form of his software is already available, but technology experts say that the new version will allow the distribution of massive amounts of files around the world.
Speaking from Las Vegas where he spoke at two influential computer security conferences, Black Hat and Defcon, Mr Clarke said that he had rebuilt his Freenet software, working with Swedish mathematician Oskar Sandberg on ways for users to share information across a vast global network.
"We're basically working on the principle that everyone in the world is separated by six degrees of separation, and there is a mathematical formula on which that is based," he said.
"Now we're rebuilding Freenet from the ground up, keeping the ideas that worked and leaving out the ones that didn't and focusing more ousability."
Mr Clarke said he wasn't worried about being sued by music corporations, as his software is not simply for sharing music files, as was the case with the file-sharing company Napster.
He said that he was primarily interested in free speech, and allowing dissidents in repressive regimes to share ideas without government intrusion.
However, both the music industry and leading politicians in the US are very concerned that Freenet will be used mostly for illegal music sharing.
The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee said recently that the US should legislate against such technology.
Thousands of music file swappers - many of them teenagers - have already been sued or threatened with legal action by music corporations in the US, Ireland and in many other countries around the world.
Mr Clarke, who grew up near Navan and who now lives and works in Edinburgh, said his software could help people who are being threatened with lawsuits just for running file-sharing software.
"It was becoming increasingly apparent that, in the US and other countries, even the act of running some peer-to-peer software can get you sued, irrespective of what you do with it and we didn't feel that was fair," he said.
Asked if terrorist groups could use Freenet to communicate without being detected, Mr Clarke said that he believed that the benefits of free speech outweighed the potential harm.
"A lot of harmful information is available on the internet anyway.
"I think on the whole, in a democratic society, people realise that the positive effects of communication outweigh the potential negative," he said.
Mr Clarke, who works for an online music rating site, was selected as one of the top 100 innovators of 2003 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Review magazine.
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