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P2P News Syndication?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the reinventing-usenet dept.

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."

39 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Remember the article troll? by i.r.id10t · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Remember the poster(s) not too long ago who would post the "complete article text in case of /.'ing" and then subtly replace/add words in the actual text? How'd you like to get your news that way, and not even know it?

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
    1. Re:Remember the article troll? by Raindance · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One might say that's not terribly different than what some news organizations already do.

    2. Re:Remember the article troll? by lawpoop · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What we need is a system with PGP signatures. That way, a reporter can build a reputation over time. If a news article is signed by a source reporter that you trust, you can warrantedly more secure of its validity. Just ignore crap that is unsigned, be cautious with stuff from a newbie, and give as much credence as warranted from someone who hasn't steered you wrong in the past.

      --
      Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
      -- Pablo Picasso
    3. Re:Remember the article troll? by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And the BBC... anyone remember that Linux thing they did while back. I don't really, but I remember it was so error ridden that it made Slashdot. The problem with the "trustworthy-ness" idea is two fold. 1) Respected reporters can plain get it wrong. 2) Respected news media companies get bought out. 3) People lie.

      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.

      --
      Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
  2. Your one-stop source for news... by some2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Naked News. Now showing on your local P2P network. :)

    1. Re:Your one-stop source for news... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I believe that's already on (cable and satellite) TV, is it not?

      Which raises the issue, what is censored now? Anything? I can already visit Al Jazeera 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.

  3. This may accelerate the outlawing of p2p by Trespass · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's one thing to rip off musicians and publishers, but when this has some chance of actually being used for samizdat, you'll see it demonized and outlawed as a tool of terrorism.

  4. The problem isn't censorship by Gogl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem is lack of attention. Censorship is a problem too, but there certainly are sources out there, albeit obscure ones, that cover all sorts of stuff that "mainstream" sources don't touch.

    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.

    1. Re:The problem isn't censorship by 1029 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not that I take CNN/NBC/CBS/etc.. as the Word of God, but...

      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.

      --
      - I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
    2. Re:The problem isn't censorship by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 3, Insightful

      this assumes you don't buy in to Chomsky's 'Propoganda Model', which suggests that mainstream sources cover things in a manner that makes their advertisers happy, NOT necessarily the mainstream/reader-base.

      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.

      --

      I write in my journal
  5. Freenet by MoonBuggy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isn't this the exact purpose of Freenet? It's simply more anonymous than your average P2P application to prevent people from being forced into self-censorship.

    1. Re:Freenet by mar1boro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anonymity is not the key though. I personally don't want my news reporters
      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.)

      --
      -- "It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries." - Thursday Next
    2. Re:Freenet by RPoet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Critical reporting often mandates anonymity, especially in oppressive countries like Iran, China and Italy. I like to think that anonymous writers could post news and opinions online and build up a reputation and be heard, like Locke and Demosthenes in "Ender's Game".

      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.

      --
      "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
    3. Re:Freenet by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I like to think that anonymous writers could post news and opinions online and build up a reputation and be heard, like Locke and Demosthenes in "Ender's Game".

      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.

      --

      I write in my journal
  6. Re:One Word: by Angry+Toad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Problem is that I no longer trust the "trustworthy" news sources. CNN tries to sound balanced but just ends up repeating whatever the US administration said today. FOX is so absorbed in jingoist dogma that they repeat whatever the administration said today and then gush about how wonderful it is. ABC/CBS/NBC/whatever don't cover enough actual news to be worth noticing.

    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).

  7. Remember... by y2imm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Desert Storm 1. The CNN guys using IRC to get info past the Iraqis.

    1. Re:Remember... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Heh. I remember quite well. At the time I was enlisted, in a very technical MOS (diagnosed/repaired communications equipment down to the component level). A lot of our gear wasn't all that advanced (some of it was Vietnam-era tech) but it was milspec certified and it worked -- most of the time anyway. But our old-ass tech was so far ahead of Iraq's that we could basically intercept all the communications and blindside them at any time of the day or night. Which we did. I don't think they even knew WTF IRC was. ;-)
      Now, the NSA on the other hand... Those guys are the reason why P2P networks like Freenet must be deployed...

  8. In case of slashdotting..... by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 3, Funny

    The site is going a bit slow, so heres the Torrent

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  9. I don't get it by Funkitup · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The whole reason why news works is because people trust newspapers. I know it's stupid, but there are people out there that trust FOX!

    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.

    1. Re:I don't get it by Johnathon_Dough · · Score: 3, Insightful
      You also get to know a news sources biases, as you mention the Guardian's out-to-get-it-ness for the Brit Govn't

      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.

      --
      If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
  10. Truth by dj245 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I would be worried about if what I was actually getting was the truth. /. covers some pretty obscure items, but 364 days out of the year I am pretty sure that the articles are mostly true. Add some common sense, and if its "too good to be true" it isn't, and I would say that most web-based trusted pages like this have the tendency to be true. If they werent, their reputation would get out that they are biased and unfair. Examples- Tomshardware, Intel biased, Foxnews, Warmongerers, ABC, Christians evangilism.

    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.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  11. Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    You mean there is more news than slashdot?

  12. Re:News? Oh my!!! What's next? by pilgrim23 · · Score: 4, Funny

    My goodness. this would mean news being promulgated by illiterate, ignorant, uninformed, panderers after obvious political or social agendas instead of the current newspapers and electronic media which ..... hey now! wait a minute...

    --
    - Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
  13. Actually. That honour falls to Usenet News. by Moderation+abuser · · Score: 3, Informative

    It existed long before the web and is a true distributed peer to peer system lacking centralised control.

    --
    Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
  14. Never happen by sproketboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Quote "This would require a high level of international agreement to be effective." We'll all be running around in ape suits chasing an (almost) naked Charlton Heston before this happens.

  15. Re:One Word: by GAVollink · · Score: 5, Informative
    Excuse the dumbness here, but
    ...can't web site's be blocked (by places like China, and work networks)? Distributed news through P2P is unstoppable. Even if you run P2P on some of these campuses, you'll never be noticed if you never share but a single news feed.

    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.

  16. No changing the articles after either... by Supp0rtLinux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And while providing the average Joe with news that is much more gory than we see on a regular basis, it would also help to put an end to *altered* stories... the kind that've been mentioned on /. before where a story is written, then because of this complaint or that reason they edit the original. If the news is on P2P networks, we'll be able to always see the raw stories...

    The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers

  17. Re:One Word: by a+whoabot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's okay to read mainstream American or otherwise Atlanticist news. But don't read just it. That's how you fall victim to the propaganda. Read some news from other countries. Try reading some from India or Germany. The stuff's not poison people. And just because it says things that contradict what you hear on CNN and the BBC doesn't mean you should stop reading it just to keep your cognitive dissonance low. It was former CBS president Richard Savant who said:

    "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."

  18. Already exists by br00tus · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's already an Indymedia family p2p news-sharing site in existence. Indymedia sites are great for text articles and pictures, but pile audio interviews and videos on top of that and the bandwidth starts to pile up. Enter something like v2v, where the site shares the audio and video files on Bittorrent, Edonkey/Overnet, Gnutella and the like, this helps lessen the load on the servers, and I suppose helps prevents censorship as well.

  19. :: Usenet III? :: by argent · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Usenet I already serves this purpose, and with MIME it can be just as rich a medium as the web. Just look at the porn-spam groups!

    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.

  20. Re:credibility? by TyrranzzX · · Score: 4, Informative

    Over time news sources build credibility. For example, I don't trust CNN to give me the whole truth about the Iraqi war, so I also goto AlJazeera. I tend to trust more for that kind of news since they're local and since the US has bombed them a few times for not helping the US's media and reporting what they're told. I don't see our US officials bombing CNN now do I? I wouldn't trust Aljazeera for technical advice since theirs is horrible (they said mydoom took up over half of the internet traffic).

    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.

    --


    Candy-Coated Knowledge

  21. Relevant Links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The people at OpenPrivacy have been working on tackling the problem of anonymous news syndication for years. The result of this effort is Reptile, which has both an anonymous RSS syndication system as well as a web-of-trust reputation framework. NewsMonster is a similar application written by some of the same people that has a reputation system but lacks support for anonymous publication.

    Also, there's JTCFrost, a freenet client that supports NNTP-style news publication.

  22. Yup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's even a news-over-freenet application. See JTCFrost.

  23. Freshness? by Doobeh · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Wouldn't one of the greatest problems be that of signal to noise. If P2P is employed as a way to supress censorship, then we by that very mark, we are unaware of who published it (since we don't want the author being censored at a later date)


    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!)

    --
    If we can't play God, who will?
  24. P2P News = Urban Legends and Stupid people stories by PetoskeyGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's nice to have an alternative method of news, but I don't think you could believe anything sent in such a network. There is "NEWS" that people can run cars on water and aliens walk among us.

    "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.

  25. Re:One Word: by DietVanillaPepsi · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Problem is that I no longer trust the "trustworthy" news sources. CNN tries to sound balanced but just ends up repeating whatever the US administration said today. FOX is so absorbed in jingoist dogma that they repeat whatever the administration said today and then gush about how wonderful it is. ABC/CBS/NBC/whatever don't cover enough actual news to be worth noticing.

    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.

  26. I wish I could read the article by WhiteManInChina · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I live in China, where everything from the BBC is blocked, so I can't even read the article...

    grrr...

  27. Similar GPL project by +ve_flow · · Score: 5, Informative

    P2P delivery of moderated news is one of the visions of this project:

    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)

  28. Don't see it happening by initialE · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can forsee several fundamental problems with spreading of news through P2P. First of all is the speed with which anything disseminates through P2P protocols. We're talking somewhere around a day or so for things to spread virally, not to mention the need to publish the presence of the latest news through the various announcement methods (trackers etc). Second, Google. P2P is not currently googlable. Third, the tendency is for us to accept whatever news is spread over the web without checking for details. If you know of anyone who still thinks that going on holiday to Bavaria/Thailand/Wherever is putting him in risk of getting his kidneys stolen and himself dumped in a tub of ice water somewhere, it's thanks to unverified mass mailing. Now imagine this being spread over P2P, leading either to a lot of people first falling for alot of false information, then distrusting whatever they hear (cry wolf syndrome) Finally, remember that P2P has enemies, namely the RIAA and MPAA (and their cronies worldwide). They'll believe, and rightly so, that anything that justifies the existence of P2P networks will weaken their ability to gestapo the net. Therefore I'd expect as much trouble from them as they can concieve up. Well, my 2 cents.

    --
    Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.