Taking p2p to the streets
p2p news / p2pnet: The PocketPacket project (or PPP) is a simple idea aimed at taking p2p sharing to street level, while putting out the word on open source and free culture. Anyone who’s used bit torrent has taken something and given it pack to people they will never meet. PPP is all about simplifying, and personalizing that act. Think of it as p2p brut, p2p in the rough.
What is it?
Basically, a PocketPacket is a modified envelope stuffed with personalized, free, hand made content and left in a public space for a stranger to find. The contents are decided by the PPP community over at sister site Bricolab.com, and are changed month by month for a different flavour of the month
The first ‘flavour’ is the PocketPedia. The PocketPacketer prints off a Wikipedia article about something they are passionate about – The Pirate Bay, for example – and stuffs it in a PocketPacket, along with a recommendation, invitation to PPP and other downloadable PocketPacket goodness. Next, they dump it on a train, a bus, or in another public space where bored people are likely to pick it up.
Through a simple act of sharing, the word gets out about p2p culture, and commuters are saved from having to read advertorial rubbish, churned out potboiler novels and train ads. Everyone’s a winner.
Go PocketPacket
You can download everything you need to get started at Pocket-Packet.org. Take p2p to the streets today.
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
Digg this story.
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
NOTE: p2pnet is being sued by Sharman Networks and Nikki Hemming, ceo of p2p application Kazaa. "The suit is a little odd, since P2PNet.net is a champion of peer-to-peer file-sharing, which is the same business that Kazaa is in," says The Globe & Mail. If you’d like to help p2pnet, or find out more, please go here.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Maybe I didn’t get it right, but…
1. Print something you want to share, like the binary dump of an .ogg file, and put it in this special envelope.
2. Find a place and leave the envelope there, making sure you won’t get arrested by the FBI’s paper-sharing crime division.
3. Not necessarily get anything in return.
Overal: Too much of a hassle.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Would you pick an envelope off a street in Iraq? I wouldn’t even do that here in the US? What if the envelope goes KABOOM!!!
June 7th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Sounds like littering to me, much like those little signs by the roadway.
June 8th, 2006 at 12:07 am
We’re social creatures. We share stuff. Always have.
A lot of people want to stop that happening because they THINK they MAY be losing A FEW BUCKS. Yeah, lets change human nature so some megacorps can maybe make a few extra bucks.
They can keep their precious copyrighted shit. I’m going to dump free stuff everywhere I can.
June 8th, 2006 at 12:14 am
mod parent up
June 8th, 2006 at 2:28 am
It is littering. It’s constructive littering to counter all of the junk mail, advertising-heavy, content-lite rubbish stuffed in our faces every day. People have come to expect anything free to be worthless, which doesn’t have to be the case at all.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Yeah, as a “suspicious-looking package” left on public transport, i could see police etc taking them away to be tested and detonated.
June 9th, 2006 at 6:45 am
Hahaha
I like it. Suspicious looking envelopes. p2p as (art) terrorism? Very Hakim Bey.
If it’s not branded by a megacorp, don’t pick it up? What sad times we live in, when we’ve been brainwashed into fearing anything out of the ordinary.
Hell, we could use plastic baggies to prove there are no bombs inside… But then, they might get picked up by narcs;-)
July 13th, 2006 at 9:45 am
yeah!!