The
final session before lunch was presented by Jason Roks, a technical advisory
board member from The Real News. His organisation is building a global news
network that is no way influenced by government funding or corporate
sponsorship. Set for a public launch in 2008 with coverage of the
According to Roks, it is technology that makes such a model viable. The Real News is enabled by Archive.org, which donates bandwidth to people who want to put media online. The second element is peering, which makes it much cheaper to deliver last-mile high-quality video.
He also spoke of user-generated distribution, allowing the thin layer of people who act as recommenders to a wider audience, using the XSPF format to allow recommenders to create channels and build an aggregation sites around specific topics, but pulling content (and bandwidth) from content providers.
