Tangential to the Smart Mobs topic, and the IAO discussions in the Switchboard comes this little tidbit from New Scientist... using Napster-style peer-to-peer networks to keep tabs on the government.
It is based on a site that Chris Csikszentmihályi and Ryan McKinley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory set up in July. That site encourages members of the public to post information about organisations, officials and politicians, such as their business links and the source of their campaign donations.
The original site was hosted on one of MIT's servers. But soon after the site was launched it had to be dramatically scaled back after being overwhelmed with traffic and because of legal worries. The researchers do not edit the content, and became worried that if any of the postings were malicious or untrue MIT could be held responsible.
They hope that following the Napster approach will get them round this problem. Instead of storing the data on a single server, so-called peer-to-peer networks hold data in a number of locations around the internet, from where it can be downloaded directly.
I think it's only a matter of time before something like this could become the Information Source of Record... especially if the government (as I suspect) isn't as quick off the draw as the RIAA was with Napster. |
