I noted this as a comment in a previous diary, but I thought I'd post it here for greater exposure.
As noted in this recent diary by daveweigel, "Progress for America" has become the first astroturf group to start advertising in favor of Social Security phase-out.
I'm tired of sitting around waiting for other groups to counter this misinformation. While I'm sure that AARP and others will continue to produce their own ads, I want to counter this crap a little more directly.
More after the jump.
So here's my idea: those of us with video editing capability should take the pro-phase-out ads, edit them to correct for lies/misinformation, and re-release them (under fair use standards) using a dedicated server, or better yet, a peer-to-peer system such as Bittorrent to reduce the bandwidth needs and increase the "novelty" effort
The goal of this would be to garner attention for novel efforts from the mainstream media. I think this is the sort of grassroots effort that could get noticed, and hopefully, get the re-done commercials lots of play in the MSM.
What do you think? Any interest or experience that would apply?
Update [2005-1-11 17:34:46 by Jonathan]: Some information on bittorrent:
Bittorrent is a peer-to-peer filesharing format. It reduces bandwidth needs on individual servers by converting clients into servers, too.
Basically, what happens is that someone will decide to obtain a file. The bittorrent program running on his or her computer accesses a site that tells indicates who has the file. The program then goes out and gets pieces of the file from many different servers, and as it obtains the pieces of the file, starts serving those pieces to other people who want the file.
This system solves one common problem of today's broadband access: downloading speed is often much faster than uploading speed.
It also greatly reduces the bandwidth needs of any individual server, since it doesn't have to serve up the whole file to everyone who asks.