collaborative backup system?

[gusl]

Does there exist some kind of collaborative backup system?

Your HD could be partnered with a few other Internetted computers (or to be more efficient, use a checksum system like RAID) to make backups of each other (or just the most important directories). There could be a daily update of the changes made.

I think most people would want some sort of encryption, so that users of the remote computers else can't read their data.

Comments

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I think there is a lot of potential for abuse. You mentioned the encryption so the person at the other end could not read it, but what if you were backing up all your child porn on someone else's computer? If the user at the other end gets in trouble, and their computer gets confiscated, will your encrypted child porn get them into more trouble?

[jbouwens.livejournal.com]

There's Freenet (http://freenet.sourceforge.net/). It's pretty much what you describe, except that it isn't actually designed as a backup system, but as a truly anonymous replacement for the WWW. Everything you post on Freenet is potentially accessible to anyone though, which may not be what you want.

Google came back with some other options too: Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/index.html), MMB (http://www.pensamos.com/mmb/) and Grouper (http://www.grouper.com/about/what.aspx).