AgoraVox – citizen reporting
p2p news / p2pnet: The second edition of the We Media Global Forum opens on May 3-4 in London. It, "brings together the trailblazers of the connected society – the thinkers, innovators, investors, executives and activists seeking to tap the potential of digital networks connecting people everywhere," the Forum website says. Last year, the We Media Global Forum was inaugurated in New York and gathered 300 international participants wondering what it is the internet changes in their everyday job.
This year again, mainstream media (MSM) will try and better understand the growing "citizen journalism" trend that may (or may not) hurt their business. In South Korea, the online citizen newspaper OhMyNews was founded in February 2000 and already counts more than 40,000 reporters. It is believed that OhMyNews is so influential that it helped determine the outcome of the 2002 election of the South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun – who granted his first interview to OhMyNews.
In Europe, AgoraVox is the leading citizen newspaper. It has been a very successful in France, launching in April, 2005. A year on it already has more than 3,000 contributors and is ranked the third most visited French collaborative blog, chosen by Yahoo as one of its core sources for its news service.
The English edition of AgoraVox started a couple of months ago and is now open to anyone willing to post stories and/or make their blog part of the initiative.
With initiatives of this kind, the monopoly of traditional media is broken and the door is open to alternative, independant information and viewpoints. Anyone can report facts and analysis. Among Agoravox contributors are a University of Michigan professor, an israeli artist, an Iraqi medical doctor, a Canadian student, an unemployed English woman —- and p2pnet. They’re among the first to take part (disclaimer: Apart from being Ratiatum.com’s head in France, I’m also the project manager of the English edition of AgoraVox).
With the explosion of blogging practices, the traditional press has to deal with the exact same issues as entertainment cartels with P2P. They have been used as what amounts to a monopoly for decades, controlling the spread of information and content.
Now they’re faced with widespread competition from online news sites and blogs. You sometimes hear statements from traditional media leaders that bear a strange ressemblance to the P2P debate we have been having for years with the entertainment cartel —– except the media don’t have the copyright weapon to threaten internet users with.
Information is free, and it is vital that it stays that way.
As an activist against unfair copyright law in France, I have always believed that there was no actual confrontation between the level of P2P file sharing and the level of physical and digital music sales. I believe the two are very complementary services and neither is eating the other’s meal.
You have to ask yourself how is it that P2P traffic goes on growing all around the world and that still, Universal Music and EMI Music both reported record growth in their last financial results. Digital music will not be sold because of repressive politics or because of restrictive DRMs, but because of attractive platforms with additionnal value compared to popular P2P services. It is the ease of use of iTunes that attracts people to Apple’s platform, not the price of their music or the C.R.A.P that goes with it.
The same is true with journalism. Copy-pasting press releases won’t save your newspaper’s business. Printing stuff read for two days on the net won’t save it either. You can’t compete with millions of bloggers reporting real-time, taking snapshots or videos on the street to "moblog" them right away.
Collectively, readers know more than journalists, and their information should be shared, not feared.
There is a whole new picture to make for journalism, and this is a big challenge for the We Media Global Forum, and this second event won’t be the last. In the meanwhile, citizen journalism will go on growing.
If you are interested in knowing more about Agoravox (and I highly encourage you to participate!), you may report to the following page:
http://www.agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=61
Information has to be shared.
Guillaume Champeau – Ratiatum.com
April 26th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Reciently I purchaced a new Rush30 Video. I am in my 50’s and had never purchaced a Rush CD or seen the band live. P2P has brought to my attention a large number of artists most of which I’ve never heard of, Stanley Jordan, Bela Fleck are only two such examples. All of which I would pay to see or be glad to suggest to others. World domination by the entertainment industry is only somthing that the population has allowed. With the information “REVOLOUTION” people are becoming aware of just how much money is being made by corporations and they are angry. Would’t it have been a money maker to design a typewriter that required you to “PURCHACE UPGRADES”. We now are at this point in time when early explorers traded meaningless shiny beads for items of great value. Microsoft is one of those early explorers, but for our benifit there are many more exlplorers willing to trade and give us a better value for our money.>>>If it cost $1.00 a month to share per individual (think world population), the profit pool is astronomical, a few hundred million per month? Even more I’d imagine. Could this be shared amongst the artists on a “popularity system”. This idea may be quite far fetched, it may be possible to send it “directly to the Artist”. Out of every $29.00 cd sold, the artist will recieve about, what $3.00? Every time the song is played on the radio 1/3 of a penny (abstract figure supprisingly close). Soon they will be monitoring “WHO IS LISTENING”(1984 Big Brother & not the Holding Company) and charge them with a “Criminal Charge” of listening without paid permission. Oh sorry, did I mean Satilite Radio.
I have to get to work and pay my bills. I thank you for your thoughts.
By the way, how do you log on & give your “Uncowardly” name??
Chicago or Just Chi