The revolution will be downloaded

Today, my friend hyper­people tried a little exper­i­ment. Out­raged by the rev­el­a­tions on SBS last night about yet more Abu Ghraib abuse, he recor­ded the tele­vi­sion, com­pressed what he’d seen, uploaded it to a server, cre­ated a bit­tor­rent and sent out this:

SBS DATELINE Abu Ghraib Report – 15 Feb­ru­ary 2006

On Wed­nes­day 16 Feb­ru­ary 2006, Aus­tralian public broad­caster SBS cur­rent affairs pro­gram DATELINE tele­cast a seg­ment fea­tur­ing 60 new photos of the tor­ture inflic­ted on pris­on­ers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These photos were secured by court order – the ACLU fig­ures prom­in­ently in the report – but these photos haven’t yet been shown in the media any­where in the United States. Because of the broad­cast on SBS, you now have access to both Web-down­load­able ver­sions and Bit­Tor­rent file-shar­ing net­work ver­sions of the broad­cast on this site. THESE PHOTOS ARE VERY DISTURBING. Please do not view this video if you are easily dis­turbed by graphic imagery of tor­ture and death.

These files are all hosted on a server loc­ated in the United States to speed access for US viewers.

Note: If you do know how to use Bit­Tor­rent, please down­load the appro­pri­ate Bit­Tor­rent file and use that. This server in the US is well-con­nec­ted but does not have infin­ite band­width. If many people share the Bit­Tor­rent ver­sion of this movie, it will greatly speed down­load times.

If you find you can’t play the video on your com­puter, down­load the Video­LAN pro­gram from here. This pro­gram will play the files. Video­LAN works on PCs, Macs, and LINUX boxes.

HIGH RESOLUTION VIDEO (H.264-MP4, 720x400, 90MB)
Down­load the Bit­Tor­rent tracker file (right-click and save this file to your hard drive)
Down­load the video (please don’t do this unless you have no other choice)

MEDIUM RESOLUTION VIDEO (MP4, 320x200, 45MB)
Down­load the Bit­Tor­rent tracker file (right-click and save this file to your hard drive)
Down­load the video

SMALL RESOLUTION VIDEO (MP4, 160x96, 13MB)
Down­load the Bit­Tor­rent tracker file (right-click and save this file to your hard drive)
Down­load the video

Please share this mes­sage and these videos with every­one you believe should see them.
The truth will out.

It was picked up by Boing Boing and Dis­Info, not to men­tion, you know, the New York Times although I don’t think they linked to the tor­rents… Now, his server is… uh, some­what under pres­sure. I think his little exper­i­ment worked. Then again, this man is fairly well-con­nec­ted. When he sends out an e‑mail to his friends, that’s 250 of the world’s most influ­en­tial digital gurus and a couple of hangers-on like me. 

Of course, it’s the con­tent that drives this. Mark would­n’t have been able to start this revolu­tion without Dateline and Dateline would­n’t have been able to put together that story without a his­tory of excel­lent report­age, a cul­ture of abuse in Abu Ghraib and an envir­on­ment of out­rage in which to throw the meat amongst the sharks. This reac­tion would simply not have occurred if the foot­age was poorly nar­rated or con­cerned the out­raged knit­ters asso­ci­ation of Mon­tréal com­plain­ing about the cost of wool.

Still, very inter­est­ing. Now we see whether it has any effect. Will this too be buried? Will some junior officer be sac­ri­ficed again? When will this sys­temic and repuls­ive con­tra­ven­tion of human rights be acknow­ledged and respon­ded to?