p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Obama, McCain, Palin, Clinton — the line forms on the right, babe — have spent literally millions of dollars online to get their various messages across to the people not only in the US, but around the world.

Because thanks to the Net, political boundaries are shrinking and what happens in one country can, and does, have a dramatic effect elsewhere, witness the military and economic disasters foisted on the world at large by the Bush administration on the one hand, and the greed of Wall Street and giant American financial institutions and companies, on the other.

Not that the US is alone. Corporate greed is rampant everywhere.

Meanwhile, and not at all incidentally, it’s election time on both sides of the border. But there’s a major difference not only in the way the two countries are run, but in how the two political contestants in the US, and the five in Canada, are getting their messages out.

And IMHO, it boils down to this: American politicians largely appreciate the importance of the online communities whereas Canadian politicians largely have no clue.

IMHO, it’d be great if Elizabeth’s Green Party somehow managed to squeak in. She’s impressive. Very. And her policies make sense. Sadly, however, it’s almost certainly going to be a case of Maybe Next Time for her.

But that may not matter. Jack Layton and his New Democrats are by no means a poor second choice and there’s a distinct possibility the desire by what increasingly seems to be most Canadians to have Stephen Harper’s existing corporate-friendly Conservative government thrown out may actually become a reality.

Because early signs suggest the Canadian elections may be going viral. And it hasn’t cost the NDP one red cent.

‘We don’t want to see hidden fees and gouging’ 

“This election gives us a real opportunity to put issues like Net Neutrality and reasonable copyright on the election agenda,” Layton said on Friday. And where did he say it?

Not at a press conference or or a rally. Rather, he chose a YouTube video which first showed upon p2pnet.net, my small Canadian news site located in a tiny village on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

He also said, “We don’t want to see hidden fees and gouging and service slow-downs all in the interests of promoting the objectives of certain large corporations.”

The NDP is also the first, and still the only, major political party to appoint a spokesman to speak specifically on digital issues and affairs.

In the NDP’s first policy statement on Net issues, also published in p2pnet, “Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was forced to call an election because the opposition parties wouldn’t give him a free pass on his upcoming agenda,” said NDP digital culture spokesman CharlieAngus, going on »»»

Funny thing was, Steve hasn’t told anybody what his agenda is. But it doesn’t take a political scientist to know exactly where this right wing crew is going – more war, more oil sands production, and a whole lot less government programs that benefit average people.

What does this mean for the digital innovation community? Plenty. And none of it will be good — that is, of course, unless average citizens work together to change the ‘agenda’.

How far will this go?

Viral, you say? Yup. So far the story is on TorrentFreak in Holland, Canada’s isoHunt, llk2 in Germany and dslreports in the US,  as well as being tweeted by The Pirate Bay on Twitter.

Other sites are picking the story up and at the time of writing (9:28 am Pacific) it was second from the top on the Slashdot firehose, the post from Soulskill saying in the need-something-to-do-between-hockey-games dept »»»

newtley writes “The New Democrats’ Jack Layton has become the first leader of a major Canadian political party to acknowledge the importance of the Internet during a federal election. He’s using YouTube to carry his message specifically to the online community, launching it on P2Pnet. ‘We don’t want to see hidden fees and gouging and service slow-downs all in the interests of promoting the objectives of certain large corporations,’ Layton says.”

Other party members have also spoken out against increased internet regulation. We’ve been following the Canadian net neutrality debate for quite some time.

To what extent will the Net help to get the NDP into power, or back as an opposition party with increased influence? Unless someone starts a research project to find out, we’ ll probably never know. But I’d bet its influence will be increasingly significant until Canadians go to the polls on October 14.

‘Four out of five Canadians 12 years and older currently go online’

In an earlier p2pnet post, I say »»»

So far, with the notable exception of Jack Layton’s New Democrats video, I haven’t noticed anyone making any kind of major effort to specifically tap into the online community.

Big mistake, as Ahnold would say.

As Canada Online, the Canadian Internet Project (CIP) reports states,we continue to be among the world’s most frequent and heaviest Internet users.all in all

Close to four out of five Canadians 12 years and older currently go online.

In other words, penetration levels are high and increasing, “particularly among traditionally marginalized social groups,” says the study, going on »»»

• Internet penetration levels in Canada increased from 72% to 78% from 2004 to 2007
• 95% of students, 87% of employed citizens and 47% of retired individuals use the Internet
• Age is strongly related to Internet adoption — the younger the individual, the more likely she/he is to be online
• Internet use is almost universal among those 12-17 years of age (96%)
• While 22% of adult parents (18+) do not use the Internet, many of them report having youth aged12-17 in their households who use the Internet (87%), as well as children aged 11 or younger who use it (21%)

That’s huge.

But the Net isn’t only used by younger generations.

Half of Canadian citizens 60 years and older are also online (51%), exceeding national adoption levels for all ages in many other countries around the world, says the CIP report.

When I looked at Layton’s YouTube video for the first time, it had 25 visits.

By mid- morning yesterday, it was at 233 and by the afternoon, 603.

At 9:35 am Pacific today, it had reached 2,494.

On the Net, there are hundreds of millions of mom-and-pop sites and although they pick up and then republish stories, they by no means link back to, or credit, the original posters.

In other words, 10 apparent posts, say, can mean an actual exposure that’s many, many times greater than it may seem to be on the surface.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Politics, P2P. 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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