Technology in the service of democracy
Patriot 2 Patriot (P2P) File Sharing Enables Access to Fleeting Government Hearings
Washington, D.C. - August 3, 2004 - A diverse coalition of citizens, activist groups, academics, entrepreneurs and fledgling technology companies today announced their support for a project to share digital recordings of government hearings on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
John Parres, Founder and Executive Director of Click The Vote grassroots advocacy group spearheaded the launch of a new non-profit, non-partisan website called P2PCongress.org in support of the project.
“The U.S. Congress holds countless hearings but the webcasts often evaporate into the ether unless citizens take the initiative to make live recordings,” said Parres, “The P2P Congress website helps coordinate those efforts and enables visitors to find audio and video copies of hearings via P2P networks.”
“P2P Congress is a simple demonstration of how P2P networks can increase public participation in the political process and make our democracy work better,” said Holmes Wilson of online activism group Downhill Battle, “It is prohibitively expensive for individuals to host these videos on their own, but P2P technology makes it possible for regular people to solve that problem.”
Video files tend to be large and expensive to deliver over the internet but P2P technology dramatically reduces the costs. The more friends, neighbors and other citizens choose to share each hearing the faster shared delivery costs drop to almost nothing.
Currently a number of people and groups are supporting the project, including Singer-songwriter Tom Barger, Click The Vote, DeviantArt.com, Dmusic.com, DownhillBattle.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, FreeCulture.org, Gnutella.com, Intent Media Works, Mashboxx, Morpheus, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, Limewire, New Yorkers For Fair Use, Off The Peer, Public Knowledge, Savethe.org, TopP2P, and TrustyFiles.
"The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) and each of our 21 Member companies fully support the objectives of P2PCongress.org. It is important for citizens to understand the quality and nature of legislative proposals and for elected officials to understand that tens of millions of voters care about their positions on P2P file-sharing measures."
“It is both ironic and tragic that P2P Congress launches with a video of the INDUCE Act hearing,” said Marc Freedman, CEO and founder of RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles, “because this same Act would effectively outlaw P2P technology and deprive the public of a valuable resource that maintains our freedom."
“P2P truly means 'Power 2 the People,” said Parres. “P2P sharing of congressional hearings demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that neutral technology like P2P can promote democracy, the rights of assembly and free speech. Indeed, it is much more than that. In many cases it may be the only way for people to see and hear crucial deliberations of their representatives in Congress.”
