I talked to some people who wrote code for it a while back, and it's actually a lot more important than us western-free-state-inhabitants might think. Over 50 % of the world has more or less of a dictatorship, and that estimate was not including russia. Dictatorships imply no free press, not even free face to face communication. No knowledge of how the government works. A continuous filter in the back of your head that judges whether you'll get into trouble for saying what you say.
Freenet not only guarantees load balancing, but more importantly untracability of file storage and originator.