p2pnet.net news:- It’s been three years in the making, but here it is: the new and improved p2pnet.

The changes are obvious, the most important being instead of having everything dumped into one archive, articles are now categorized.

It’s going to take me quite a while to get everything updated into the right sections – there are thousands of different posts on all kinds of topics to deal with – but I hope it won’t take too long to get properly sorted.

Also, I’m afraid anyone who’s registered will need to register again. Sorry about that.

Registration allows people to put their names, or nicknames, on comment posts and when p2pnet first went online, I made a conscious decision to exclude logs. I couldn’t see a reason for them. I wanted to be able to speak freely and express myself freely, and how could I not extend the same freedom to anyone choosing to contribute two p2pnet in any way, including comment posts?

So, anonymity will continue to be guaranteed and this new p2pnet does not, and will not, keep logs of comment posts. Full stop. Period. End of story.

P2P mean People to People

p2pnet is all about people being able to virtually talk to each other without restrictions. It was never, and still isn’t, entrepreneurial. It started life as a personal page but wasn’t long before writing copy for it took up most of my day (and many of my nights : ) and, thanks to the support of what were then the principle commercial p2p application companies, I was able to work on it 24/7, pay my mortgage and keep up with site expenses as they grew.

However, thanks largely to the ongoing depredations of the corporate music industry, only one of my original advertisers, Blubster, remains and the guy behind it, Pablo Soto, has been a huge help over and beyond any benefit he may have derived from his ad.

I was also getting help from a small group of people in Britain who had to drop their contributions just before Christmas last year, when I came close to having to sell the site. Then, “I think p2pnet may pull through, with a bit of luck,” I said. “It’ll be a completely new deal, but that’s cool and for the best. Change is what it’s all about. Anything which stands still eventually rots. Ask the cartels : )”

Thanks to an American supporter who’s elected to keep his identity to himself, for the time being, p2pnet is still around, and still completely independent.

Janie Mehew created the original content management system, which has somehow kept going against all odds, including increases in traffic, design alterations, moves to new hosts, and so on.

Sixto Luis Santos made several major improvements in the CMS, but it’s been evident for some time that further upgrades, if not a complete rebuild, were absolutely necessary. And as you can see, that’s now in hand, thanks to Bob Bryant, an American programmer who’s been keeping the p2pnet wheels turning for the past few months.

We have a few things to deal with, for example getting the newsletter going again, but what you see see is basically what you’ll be getting.

A lot of people have also contributed, and continue to contribute occasionally and regularly.

They include (in no particular order – the indomitable and irreverent catflap, whereabouts unknown; Bill Evans, who founded boycott-riaa.com; UK student Daniel Hudson; Australian lawyers Sally Hawkins and Alex Malik; Alex H, also in Australia; Benedek Toth in Hungary; Free/Libre and Open Source Software enthusiast, author and promoter Russell McOrmond in Canada; VA pensioner Tom Poe in the US; entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms, US; Monty Icenogle, amateur radio call-sign KD6CAE, US; and, Chris Ovenden, a self-confessed technology freak and musician in the UK.

Again in no special order, huge thanks also go to Bill Thompson (UK); Rob Hyndman (Canada); Michael Geist (Canada); Susan Crawford (US); Howard Knopf (Canada); Torrentfreak (Holland); Bob Lefsetz; Jack Spratts, Australia; and, Ashlee Vance (The Register, US) all of whom are experts in their own fields, and online publishers, who allow me to run their original material in p2pnet, and some of whom are also of tremendous help in the sidelines.
And p2pnet net would not, of course, be what it is without the thousands of people who’ve anonymously, and by name, added their comments to posts.

Meanwhile …

If p2pnet is to survive, obviously there has to be an income, and that means advertising, always a contentious issue. I’d rather not have to rely on it, but I have a family as well as site to support, and so ads are necessary.

I’ve never done more than break even, and I don’t expect to become rich from p2pnet. However, I hope the income from ads will allow me to to get into a position where I can hire at least one other person to help produce/edit material on a regular basis.

Now stories are going into specific sections, I’m hoping I’ll be able to attract advertisers, but I promise you’ll never see pop-ups, annoying videos in the middle of stories, images floating around while you’re trying to read, or stuff like that.

Finally, several times in the past I’ve been criticised because of the undeniable fact a lot of posts have very definite perspectives.

That isn’t going to change.

“Your continual diatribes have become extremely tiresome, and so have you,” said one complaint. “Please give it a rest,” and, “I would like to see Mr. Newton stop to[u]ting himself as being ‘unbiased,” said another, going on “In many instances, this blog is like Fox News: it claims to be ‘fair and balanced’ and ‘without bias’ but a more accurate claim would be ‘biased in the opposite direction’,” and, “calling yourself ‘unbiased’ when in reality your are just biased in a direction opposite that of the mainstream is just being dishonest in my opinion.”

I responded, in part:

When and where have I ever said I was unbiased? I’m as biased as they come, I’ve explicitly said so on a number of occasions, and I’ve never pretended to be otherwise.

I’m biased against any and all efforts to kill free speech, online or off. I’m biased against the entertainment cartels as they pretend to be honest businesses trying to earn an honest living. I’m biased against their efforts to penetrate school classrooms to spread their poisonous ‘educational’ programs, claiming they represent decent standards for children to follow. I’m biased against the one-sided reporting by many, if not most, elements of the mainstream media who DO pretend to be fair, balanced and unbiased. I’m biased against attempts to flood us with tricky Net advertisements designed to force themselves past our natural barriers of free choice. And I could go on : )

I’m biased … Most definitely. And since you mention Fox, where does it afford viewers a chance to air their opinions, named or otherwise, without without edits? On p2pnet, though, anyone can comment freely, whatever their views. Ask Gachnar and others like him/her. And that’s the way it’s always been.

A revised p2pnet is on the way and it’ll have both forums and comment posts for articles. You’ll have to register for the first, but the second will allow anonymous posting, as ever.

So far, no one has ever offered to submit anything offering the corporate perspective. If and when one such comes along, I’ll run it untouched just as I do other papers and articles.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to call it like I see it …

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom ~ Benjamin Nathan Cardozo – American jurist (1870–1938)

That’s it for now.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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