P2P News Syndication? 266
Buggernut writes "According to an article at BBC, news may be the next major item to be passed around through P2P networks, thereby escaping the grasp of the censors' attempts to control the spread of forbidden information."
Remember the article troll? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
(pretty good protection).. for second I thought you were talking about GPGP (gordon's pretty good protection), a proprietary scheme I developed for one of our apps
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
What we need is a system with PGP signatures.
Even better, what about a system where the original news content is md5 hashed? Why have a "web of trust" when the validity of a document can be checked in a straightforward manner?
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
Remember , the original news content is only available via p2p and could be anywhere. There's no one definitive source.
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:2)
Re:Remember the article troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's better than the current system, but it's really just a collectively identifying gossip mill. And while it'll be useful, the masses probably won't know about anyway.
Public Keys (Score:2, Interesting)
Find a journalist you trust? An entire news organization maybe?
You could check the validity of source every time.
Re:Public Keys (Score:2)
In case of /.ing (Score:2, Funny)
This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, Napster co-founder Sean Parker.
In his vision, people around the world would post the most outrageous slander via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs.
They would further the trend toward sensationalism already seen in the major news services, said Mr Parker.
"Currently, only news with so
Your one-stop source for news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Your one-stop source for news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which raises the issue, what is censored now? Anything? I can already visit Al Jazeera [aljazeera.net] to see all the bloody babies and anti Bush views I might care to read.
The barrier to individuals broadcasting news isn't censorship, it's credibility. The problem is, no one person's view constitutes "the news," even if they were there firsthand. Reporting news well requires access to the places and key figures, that's what news agencies offer.
Re:Your one-stop source for news... (Score:2, Interesting)
--
This may accelerate the outlawing of p2p (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem isn't censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is lack of attention and publicity. Mainstream sources cover mainstream things because that's what the mainstream wants: it's what sells. While stories are sometimes neglected due to their being taboo, I'd say the main obstacle is lack of interest. The stories may be taboo at CNN, but they're probably being covered elsewhere. It's just the elsewhere (Indymedia, foreign sources, what-have-you) is unpopular: people aren't interested.
A P2P news network might ironically solve that problem, though, as it would likely get a fair amount of press in and of itself.
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:2)
Even with a P2P news network, the problem will still be lack of attention.
It's easy to get a bored young web surfer with a broadband connection to let his/her PC be a stopping point for popular music, 1337 warez, or hot pr0n. But what's the chance of getting said netizen to give up valuable MP3 space for the lat
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
The day I take the likes of Indymedia to be an actual news site is the day I'll basing my opinions on the rants of the insane downtown homeless guy that sells magic wands.
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:2, Troll)
Oh, the Irony.
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:2)
Irony... Where? What? Who?
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:2)
That being said, though, I agree that often the news is lost in the noise. I've wondered whether that's part of the reason for all the negative stories one sees on US news - pure distraction.
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:2)
I must have slept thru that one, can someone bring me up to speed?
That said, the obvious bias occasionally shown, and the "don't cover that, its either verboten or so far off the beaten path its not worth the ink" thats so obvious from the big 6's network news operations. The big 6 being CBS,ABC,NBC,CNN,FOX and PBS.
None of those organizations exist for *any* reason but to sell commercial time, with 4 to 6 commercials in
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:2)
Re the Jane Akre / Steve Wilson thing, their website is here:
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/
Interesting reading. The hormone in question is banned in Canada and Europe. Cheers!
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:2)
1. Each story must be signed by at least one key.
2, Each reporter must have his own key, with which he can sign and assign a "news-worthyness" and "trustworthyness" to his stories.
3, There must be several organizations to keep track of and collect stories. Essentially, they will be the new breed of newspapers, whose job it will be to sift through and classify news. This will help
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not an expert, but I know a thing or two about news.
Advertisers, be they print or broadcast, do not buy space or airtime based on the editorial leanings of the news desk. They buy space or airtime based simply on the number of people that will be exposed to that space or airtime. The measurement of those numbers is not exactly a science, but it is a finely honed craft. Numbers mean everything.
News outlets live and die by their audience numbers. An outlet with a broad reach or circulation will be more successful at securing advertising dollars than one with a smaller audience.
So, in essence, yes. News outlets must provide the coverage that the audience wants.
The thing about the audience, though, is that it's not homogenous. There are people out there who will read or watch just about anything. You want to deliver just-the-facts, objective news? There's an audience for that. You want to do deliver leftward-leaning analysis? There's an audience for that. You want to deliver rightward-leaning analysis? There's an audience for that. And if you want to deliver tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories or anti-establishment rants, there's an audience out there for that, too.
The idea that all news is the same because all news outlets are competing for the same audience is bogus. Multiple news outlets exist in print, on television, on the radio, and on the web precisely because they're all reaching for different audiences.
If a story gets ignored by the various major outlets, it's probably got nothing to do with business or audience share, and it's certainly got nothing to do with propaganda. The culture of news is such that the dissemination of propaganda is essentially impossible. Rather, if a story gets ignored, it's probably because it set off the bullshit detectors of desk editors everywhere and got bumped from the news budget accordingly.
Re:The problem isn't censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
I certainly hope that is usually the case, but certainly not all the time. After all, Bill Maher lost his show, Politically Incorrect, because the advertisers pulled
I will believe it will happen... (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Insightful)
to be anonymous. I want them to be accountable. A reputation tied to public keys
is what we need. I suppose an anonymous news reporter could eventually
build up a reputation as credible. That would be tough.
(The public key thing was discussed above, but seemed pertinent here.)
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Insightful)
However, Freenet is not necessarily about anonymity. People could still post on Freenet using their full names and sign cryptographically. An equally important part of Freenet is censorship resistance. Once something has been posted, it cannot be taken offline as long as there is demand for the content. That's information availability, a cornerstone of democracy.
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Insightful)
Please recall that the two characters you mentioned were consummate liars whose only agenda was to gain power for themselves. An agenda they advanced, incidentally, by manipulating the masses by telling them what they wanted to hear.
That's information availability, a cornerstone of democracy.
The big challenge facing democracy in the 21st century is not the availability of information. If we've learned anything in the past fifty years, it's that information is like sand: it finds its way in through cracks and openings that were far too small to see, and fills your tent, your bunk, and your boots. The ubiquity of information is not the problem.
The problem is thought. Have you ever heard the expression, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing?" It's true, it's true. To be partially informed and to think yourself wise is far, far worse than to be ignorant and to know it.
When you figure out how to write a computer program that makes people aware of the limits of their knowledge, please let me know. That'd be something worth having.
Re:Freenet (Score:2)
Yup (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Freenet (Score:2)
The fact that it was dog slow (
I expect an excessive amount of (Score:2, Funny)
Remember... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Remember... (Score:3, Interesting)
oh goody (Score:2)
Corrupt
Incomplete
Poor Quality
or possibly even think I am getting news, I open it up and get:
"Durty, S1uts with farm animals !!!"
yay.
In case of slashdotting..... (Score:3, Funny)
Text of article (Score:2, Funny)
Peter: No, you don't understand. So, everyday, Slashdot gets these anonymous posts with mod points that just go away. It's called aggregate. Samir and Michael and me wrote a program that drops those into an account we own.
Joanna: So you're stealing.
Peter: I don't think I'm explaining it right. You take a penny from a dish by the register right?
Joanna: From the crippled
I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
P2P news doesn't really seem to have that same trust value. Personally I am happy with the Guardian newspaper in the UK to generally get things right. It is their job to go out and read stories from around the world and present the facts to me in a way that I feel is relatively objective. I know they like (think it's their job) to screw the british government so I take that into account.
I can't see how p2p would be any better. I would just get a massive influx of information that I don't have time to sift through. News syndicates not only do the sifting job for us, but they hopefully do it in a trustworthy fashion.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Once you have compared a couple of news sources, you learn pretty quick how they slant their story's. So, even if it isn't the whole story, you will at least have a general idea of what was omitted or skewed based on that source's leanings.
If your news comes randomly from all over, you will never know the angle someone is pushing, nor ever the whole story.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you make an excellent point about the reliability of the major news services; they do the job better than I ever could, and since there are so many eyes looking at them they're subject to to at least some review.
I like the idea of P2P-style (which is to say decentralized) news sources, however, because on this side of the pond our mass-media outlets are becoming
Reputation (Score:2)
If someone passes bogus news, they get a bad reputation. More importantly, if someone consistently passes 'good' news, they get a good reputation and lots of folks download their news.
Like another poster suggested, news releases could be GPG-signed so that
1. Known-good news sources could be identified, and
2. Mean folks couldn't change the news the kno
Truth (Score:4, Insightful)
With P2P you just have no clue what you are getting. It might be true, might not be. If you've seen the story before then you could be sure that it was true, but that would defeat the purpose of news- reading stories you haven't read before.
Slashdot? (Score:3, Funny)
Naivety (Where's Hugo Weaving when you need him?) (Score:2)
Oh, would it were so, Professor Anderson.
There are quite a few of your human governments that don't have a problem with slavery and terrorism, let alone child pornography.
Never happen (Score:3, Funny)
No changing the articles after either... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers [nccomp.com]
Already exists (Score:5, Informative)
:: Usenet III? :: (Score:4, Interesting)
Which does make me wonder how a medium even less controllable than Usenet would manage to avoid turning every group into spam. You'd need something like Google News to make sense of it... but, hold on, we already *have* Google News.
Re::: Usenet III? :: (Score:2)
Or not....
Re::: Usenet III? :: (Score:2)
Usenet isn't even close (now) (Score:3, Informative)
And so far as spamming a p2p service like freenet - well, there's that "demand" thing. So unless you are posting some high demand spam, it's doomed.
Re:Usenet isn't even close (now) (Score:2)
Relevant Links (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there's JTCFrost [freshmeat.net], a freenet client that supports NNTP-style news publication.
Freshness? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now spread this out to a wide implementation, what news is 'worthy' and 'trusted' to read if this very untraceable route holds true? I might as well read mind-numbing, ultra-biased blogs, because that is all the system would amount to.
I go to the news outlets I currently do because I can to a high degree trust the articles, news without that trust is.. gossip.
P2P for articles, especially news doesn't hold true, how is the article propogated? Will I have to wait 2 days for a fresh article to make its way around the Internet to me? If I want news, I'm used to getting information when I want it, P2P fails on this point.
People think P2P is the cure to [insert internet downfall] because it works for MP3's. But MP3-P2P essentially runs off peoples greed, so there are mass copies of MP3's around, no-one cares if an Mp3 is four days, old, 3 years old, it makes not a difference, but hell, even MP3's are tainted, blanks, bad rips, misnamed, to assume this wouldn't follow on to any other P2P implementation is wishful thinking.
Not to mention that only when an article gains a certain critical popularity mass would most people be able to find it on the system due to the inability to search every user without having a centralised database/hub (which could of course be.. you got it, censored!)
Re:Freshness? (Score:2)
I can't put any trust in anonymously posted news. So, you either put your name on it, and risk future censorship, or leave it unsigned, and risk being totally ignored. I think this is only going to be of any value if postings are signed.
Re:Freshness? (Score:2)
The point is that you need to form a trust relationship with the people creating the news. People that are good sources for news can be trusted, and people simply showing up and trying to push a P.R. news piece are similarly discounted.
The biggest problem with this sort of approach is that it is somewhat incompatable with technologies like Freenet, but even that is not totally i
P2P News = Urban Legends and Stupid people stories (Score:5, Insightful)
"Consider the source" means a lot when your trying to decide if a news story is believable. P2P removes the credibility. News will bubble to the top based on how many people share it.
P2P news will end up a worthless collection of lies and urban legends. Most of my family is already is part of such a network via email and no matter how many times I tell them otherwise they still spread the made up news stories, "HUGS" and prayers. I search out and refute almost every piece of crap my way, but no one sends that out 20 times to everyone they now.
What news needs is peer review and feedback. P2P in it's current form doesn't offer anything like that. You would end up with worthless POP news that people bother to keep and share. News needs a reputation system.
At least now I can see something comes from Fox News and know it's likely distorted, on P2P there is no trust at all.
Re:P2P News = Urban Legends and Stupid people stor (Score:2)
Torrential (Score:2)
The BIGGEST news on P2P will be... (Score:2)
P2P Sockets project (Score:3, Interesting)
the P2P Sockets project paper has interesting
comments about this (it's a JXTA core project)
P2PSockets Intro [codinginparadise.org]
Cheers, Joel
I wish I could read the article (Score:3, Interesting)
grrr...
Similar GPL project (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.freshmeat.net/projects/eucalyptt
Think of the moderated efficiency of communication provided by slashcode coupled with the decentralisation of a P2P network. With an open framework such that anyone may post on any topic without prior editor checking
The project is in early stages and is functional for a group of any size.
(hidden agenda disclosure: I am a developer on the project)
Isn't that called "Gossip" and "Rumors"? (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes, there's a level of quality that you can get from professionals, but don't think that "objectivity" means there isn't a lot of bias. I'm not talking about the US's "Liberal Media" that the right-wingers whine about - the actual media are radically biased towards the Establishment, and if you want to find some actual liberal media you need to listen to Pacifica Radio or read leftist web sites. National Public Radio is relatively liberal in its cultural content, except for an obvious bias in favor of music by Dead White Europeans, but if you look at its poilitical coverage, it's still basically believing that the government that funds it are a really good thing, even if there are occasional individuals it doesn't like.
Oh, and back to the reliability of P2P-distributed news, did you hear that thing about Bush's trouble with Duct Tape?
Don't see it happening (Score:4, Interesting)
it's a cycle (Score:2, Insightful)
VOA's Been Doing this for a while (Score:2)
Anyway, when VOA, whose TV/radio signals are blocked/jammed on the mainland try to get the feeds out, they'll run broadcasts through other sites [freexinwen.com], and also make everything available via P2P networks.
Whether you agree with VOA/the U.S. Government is another matter, but they're doing stories on th
HEY, Lets just lie to them ... (Score:2)
Then once it's in place, give em the finger.
Great (Score:3, Insightful)
Great! Now teenagers and old ladies can get sued by another content industry for sharing.
Re:One Word: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:One Word: (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, for all their faults I'm finding weblogs of various sorts more directly valuable than TV news (too politically charged and beholden to advertisters to be truly objective) AND print news (too late, and too beholden to advertisers to rock the boat).
Re:One Word: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."
Richard SALANT (Score:2)
Re:One Word: (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't consider any news source trustworthy. I simply have to gather the "facts" from as many news sources as possible and then formulate an opinion. I may watch Fox (although I try to avoid doing so at all costs, the people I live with love it and I hear it in passing), CNN, and BBC News; read the Guardian, Le Monde, NY Times and The Daily Mail or Telegraph (UK) in order to examine an issue.
Each newspaper has an agenda. American journalism aims to be objective which makes for dull reading. I love to read the Guardian because of its blatantly left-leaning nature, for example. The agenda is always there, even in so-called "objective" news sources, it is just not as blatant.
Re:One Word: (Score:2)
Re:One Word: (Score:5, Informative)
The only reason why Music sharing has slowed down is that it's static (the same 100,000 songs are shared over and over again, and are easy to write programs to search for). News is different every couple of days. So as long as people find a way to look for news, then there's little chance it will be able to be blocked and stopped.
Speaking of news feed, USENET is also difficult to trace and block as well. It's been around for much longer than P2P, and has not yet been campaigned against on a large scale. It's problem is awareness and a total lack of decent (neat) client programs for USENET.
Re:One Word: (Score:2)
One Word: (Score:2)
Re:credibility? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:credibility? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most news reporters still like to think of themselves as objective seekers of the truth - but they also know what is "appropriate" or "practical" to talk about and what "crosses the line". This is the real ghost in the machine - the unspoken areas of omission. They're often pretty critical to understanding context.
Re:credibility? (Score:2)
Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Jack Kelly: HA HA HA!!!
Re:credibility? (Score:2)
Re:credibility? (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, but large reports and scienfitic reports, video's, and recordings are extraordinarily difficult to counterfeit. Many documents reach over 1000 pages if not more and many recordings are hundreds of hours long. Much of what's reported by thememoryhole.com , for example, can be trusted. Other things, like documents of Bush's or Kerry's service records are difficult to determine since they're much shorter and much more easily fudged with.
Not only that, but anyone with $100 US can pick up a cheap digital camcorder. You can photoshop images, but it's far more difficult to photoshop a video of some Iraqi kid videotaping a bunch of americans blowing the crap out of their parents or police searching through a house with a search warrent to consficate your computer and then consficating all the electronic equipment in the house. Go onto a P2P app and type in "UFO", there are lots of home video's I doubt are faked (although some are, and it takes a keen eye to see it). Cameras and portable flash memory is getting cheaper, so much so that soon cameras the size of a minimaglite will be available with 12 hours of recording for a couple hundred bucks.
And as some of the DRM technologies get incorperated into P2P apps (such as measures to ensure someone throwing something up is throwing that thing up has a name and an address and is the same person who can be trusted before) people can build trust relationships on websites and accounts.
Re:credibility? (Score:2, Insightful)
But it IS pretty easy to just clip off the beginning where the parents shot at the Americans. I'm just saying. This rush to trust "anyone else" is a foolish thing. To each their own I guess.
Re:credibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:News? Oh my!!! What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually. That honour falls to Usenet News. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Forbidden?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Forbidden?" (Score:2)
Nope, for two reasons. First, because Diebold's experiments with new types of voting machines are hardly representative of our "most basic principles and beliefs." They're experiments, nothing more. If they work, they'll be used widely. If they don't, they'll be improved or replaced. That's as far as it goes.
(Your interest in Diebold is probably inspired more by the f
Re:"Forbidden?" (Score:2)
No computer program has ever changed the world. Only people can do that.