Downhill Battle
= a non-profit organization working to end the major label monopoly and build a better, fairer music industry
URL = http://www.downhillbattle.org/
Has evolved into the Participatory Culture Foundation.
Description
The following quote shows that developers of filesharing programs are aware of the social and political import of their work. See the previous quotes on how the whole development of filesharing is driven by a political and social struggle. It's not technology causing change (technological determinism), it is technology in turn determined by the dynamics of struggle. Question by Greplaw editors: Is there anything about Bit Torrent that helps foster a participatory culture?
Reply: “It can definitely be a part of big step forward. 'Participatory culture' is how we've started thinking about the intersection of all these phenomenons like blogs, filesharing networks, wikis, and just the web in general. They all make it easier for people to create and distribute art/ideas and also let people act as filters and editors. But we're really at the very, very beginning of all this. The shift that we're going to see from the current top-down culture model will be absolutely revolutionary. As overused as that term is, there's really no other word that captures the magnitude of what's going on here.
As for BitTorrent specifically, searching for content on napster-style search and download clients really sucks and, on its own, creates a huge bias towards corporate content that people already know about. On the other hand, websites and blogs organize and present content so that you can discover things you didn't even know you were looking for. Since BitTorrent uses web-based links, it has the potential to fit very well with blogs and content management systems while making it possible for anyone to offer very large files without worrying about bandwidth." (http://grep.law.harvard.edu/features/04/08/26/0236209.shtml)
More Information
Grey Tuesday as an example of online music activism in action, at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/howard/index.html