July 20, 2004

• Wired article.
• Great find, LoopyG! I read the Wired article, and then visited the site. This is just about what I'd been looking for; an un-biased approach to reporting what's going on. I can't wait to get home and take a closer look at that site!
• Far be it from me to be all dismissive in my first comment ever, but I've got a few problems with this. First, "difficult to obtain?" These documents are in every public library in the country. That's a big part of what libraries are for. Remember them? Not as convenient, maybe, not hardly difficult. Second, the Wired article says, "'People have a taste for unmediated source documents,' Aftergood said. 'There is something attractive about being able to see original documents and not just be told by a newscaster or reporter what the documents say.'" But then, in the very next graf, it says, "sites like outragedmoderates.org and The Memory Hole help single out the most important documents from thousands of pages of material and put them in context." You can't have it both ways, guys. Are you providing primary source material without regard to its content, or are you cherry-picking documents based on an agenda? Next, what facility exists to verify the authenticity of these documents? When you download a document from the GPO web site, you can be reasonably sure you got the real thing. Not 100% certain, but reasonably sure. But if you download something from a network that's most widely used to distribute porn and pirated material, what kind of confidence do you have that you got unaltered copies? This is a fine idea and all, but I don't see it as being the slightest bit beneficial to democracy. In fact, at the risk of sounding cynical I'd say that it's just another way to promote one particular agenda. Finally, if we want to talk about true primary source material, y'all know that you can download the audio recordings of the 9/11 commission hearings in audiobook format from iTunes, right? I got my copies today, and though I may never sit through them all, it's nice to know that I have 'em.
• Jeff, look harder then. You are judging a new use for what it is (and a young idea this is), and not at what it could be. Dismissing the idea is a sure way to make sure it's never realized. As for confidence, the content of other goods transferred via P2P says nothing about the transfer of a specific file. They are mutually exclusive. Lastly, yes, there is the potential for misdeeds, people who change a document and put it out there. Most GNUTella network P2P programs get the same problem: a movie or song is renamed to something that it is not, but this is not how all P2P programs work. Not all P2P is as anonymous as Kazaa, Morpheus, etc. The one I use is more direct, and there are users you learn to trust as reliable sources, their files are not corrupt.
• Loopy, I'm not sure you got my point. I'm not all that bothered by the prospect of "making sure it's never realized," because this just strikes me as a fundamentally dumb idea. The problem is legit enough, if you kind of squint and ignore the fact that all of these documents are available to everybody already. Yes, we could make them more conveniently available. Yes, we could ensure their continued availability against some hypothetical, future, tin-foil-hat possibility of a purge. Not serious concerns in my book, but fine. But this isn't a good solution to the problem. It's a conduit for the dissemination of an agenda, not a nonpartisan clearinghouse; the assertion that it's not mediated is a flat-out lie, as illustrated in the Wired article itself. And there's no trust aspect to it at all, not even something as rudimentary as a digital signature system. Your assertion that "the content of other goods transferred via P2P says nothing about the transfer of a specific file" is bogus. I'm not going to buy aspirin from a drug dealer specifically because I don't trust him. Likewise, I'm not going to download controversial documents from an anonymous peer-to-peer network that specializes in anal rape MPEGs. I just don't have any reason to trust the source in either case. The possibility of getting tainted goods is too high to ignore. This whole thing seems more like a feeble attempt to legitimize peer-to-peer file-sharing networks than a genuine initiative for democracy. If this particular idea withers on the vine, I'm not going to shed a tear for it. It's a bad solution to a problem that's just not that big a deal to begin with. (Sorry, I didn't mean for my very first contribution to be so negative. I'll do better on the next one.)
• You don't seem to follow what I am saying. Yes, all those documents are freely available, yes that website filters the documents that are available. But no, this isn't the only way it could be. The idea of government docs through P2P is not strictly limited to the link in this post. I could go and collect every gov doc I could find, organize them, log in to my favorite P2P program, and make them available in a convenient, organized manner. And yes, I could do this in an anal rape MPG server, and that would not change a thing. Other users of the P2P network know me, recognize my user name, and know that I am not going to give them false files. The really good part is when it comes to things like memos, or transcripts of non-national speeches that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. Those speeches being given on the campaign trail aren't always made available, or even quoted in the media, yet there are people at those speeches who could transcribe them, or just give major/interesting points presented in the speech, and make those available over P2P. This is already done, but the thing is, over FTP or via a standard website, it is hard to transfer large amounts of these files, or to simply make them known. On P2P there is more serendipity, coming across something of interest that you didn't expect to find or even be interested in.
• I could go and collect every gov doc I could find, organize them, log in to my favorite P2P program, and make them available in a convenient, organized manner. And yes, I could do this in an anal rape MPG server, and that would not change a thing. Other users of the P2P network know me, recognize my user name, and know that I am not going to give them false files. Yeah, but at that point there's nothing "P2P" about it. You're just running an FTP server for all intents and purposes. It's centralized and mediated. Let's say I trusted you. (I don't mean to imply that I don't; it's just an example.) I could download the documents from your computer with a high degree of confidence that I'm getting the real thing, but only because I trust you. If I see another copy of the same document on another site, I'll have no reason to believe that it's authentic. Particularly given that people with agendas—and we all have one—have much to gain from disseminating altered or entirely forged documents. Which means the copies that aren't actually hosted on a computer you personally control, Loops, are useless to me. Worse than useless, actually, because they make it harder to find the originals when I go search. Those speeches being given on the campaign trail aren't always made available If you look at the candidates' web sites, you'll find that they are. Furthermore, campaign-trail speeches by candidates that later go on to win become part of the public papers of that Presidency and are archived forever at the National Archives in Washington as well as the respective Presidential library. Not until later, though, but you see my point. What I'm saying here is that the documents in question are not at all hard to find. Certainly no harder to find on the web than on Napster or whatever they're calling it these days. yet there are people at those speeches who could transcribe them, or just give major/interesting points presented in the speech, and make those available over P2P. Again, there's nothing "P2P" about it. You're just running a server. Actually, in that case, you're basically just running a blog. You decide what you want to transcribe or what constitutes a "major/interesting point" which means it's mediated just like everything else. And once the documents leave your site, they become part of the vast, untrusted and untrustworthy mesh of crap that's already out there, which means people who are concerned about getting authentic source material aren't going to trust the documents you created. On P2P there is more serendipity, coming across something of interest that you didn't expect to find or even be interested in. Which is, in my opinion, just another way of saying that it's hard to find what you're looking for. Look, I respect you and I respect your opinion, but I just don't agree. Like I said before, if you kinda squint, the problem they're addressing seems real enough. Not urgent, but okay, whatever. But their application of "P2P" technology to it doesn't provide a good solution, and is clearly more of an attempt at "P2P PR" than any sincere effort to advance democracy.
• You seem to have a high level of distrust. Yes, if I were the only person supplying the documents, it would basically be a server. Luckily, there are many people on the network, and everyone knows many people who are trustworthy. Also, there is often signatures indicating a file has not been altered. I suggest you learn a bit about this by going to the Neo Modus website, and trying out the program. There are many ways to skin a cat. Also, I have seen speeches by folks such as Kucinich that were never published, or mentioned, they were casual matters. Also, more minor and regional government officials don't even transcript much of their speeches, or their work. And preemptively, yes, P2P is often a local thing, as the program mentioned above can demonstrate.