Digitaltopia

Jon Newton and company over at p2pnet have been one of the front runners in file sharing, technology, and news about all things geeky for awhile now. They have emerged as one of not the best source for daily news updates on such things. They have set a goal of raising $2,500 dollars as soon as possible. I'll let them explain it as Jon is much more adept then me with words.

(from p2pnet)
p2pnet.net campaign:- This is long, but p2pnet technical manager Sixto Luis Santos and myself (Jon Newton) badly need your help so we'd appreciate it if you'd read this through.
p2pnet isn't a an entrepreneurial venture or a business. It's a commitment and we need to get about $2,500 together as soon possible, mainly to keep the wolf from Sixto’s door.
p2pnet has advertisements, for which we’re extremely grateful. We'd be dead without them. But don't be fooled. The ads don't even cover costs.
I'm a married man with a wife, a daughter and a mortgage and I now run p2pnet by myself full-time, 24/7, keeping it going with savings (now down to the dregs), a bank loan and from ad income.
A few months back, I was joined by Sixto Luis Santos, a fantastic programmer who lives in Puerto Rico. He, too, has a wife, as well as three young children - and a mortgage. Between us, we want to expand p2pnet to the next stage, and also be able to hire one or two full-time writers.
Jon
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A two-man band
Is there a real need for a site like p2pnet? Yes, and it's being proven every day by the fact our traffic continues to go up.
In August, 2004, p2pnet had 224,493 unique visitors and 658,693 total page views. It's almost doubled in 12 months. This July, we had 415,202 unique visitors and 1,904,336 total page views. And as I write this nine days into August, so far, we’re at 192,828 unique visitors and 577,286 total page views (and rising : )
Not bad for a two-man band with no backing, no crew and no financial support. Our success is because p2pnet is the only site carrying regularly updated, daily news from the trenches. We do what we can, but the content needs to be boosted and diversified, and that's what this is all about.
Disinformation and misinformation releases are spewed out every day by the music, movie and software cartels to be swallowed whole by the mainstream media and then regurgitated as supposedly accurate news and information from credible sources.
Today’s story about an attempt by the cartels to mischaracterize half of Canadian students as thieves is a typical example.
This kind of cut-and-paste journalism and reporting by press release is now standard for both the major on- and offline mainstream media and, regrettably, some sites perceived to be presenting unslanted news from the other side of the fence. It plays straight into the hands of the MPAA, RIAA, CRIA, ARIA, IFPI, BPA, BSA and all the other consumer (that’s you) control and manipulation organizations.
p2pnet was the first, and is still the only, web page to carry original daily news stories, features and commentaries on p2p, digital media and distributed computing events and developments which haven’t been spun, filtered and pre-digested by vested corporate interests.
We're throwing the lies back in their teeth and, with that in mind, we're also a source for a number of news outlets, including Google and Yahoo.
Sixto has already made a number of important behind-the-scenes coding changes, but he supports himself as a freelance programmer and to finish, he’s been putting in the hours on in his own time every chance he had. But now it’s crunch time. Now he needs to complete the new content management system without worrying about where his mortgage payment is coming from.
But I've run out of money.
Hire new faces
The new p2pnet is modeled on the existing one, but it'll have a newspaper look with sections instead of just one index, as at present. The front page will have three profiles of people in the news, the main news lead (turning inside if need be), and 20 headlines for the day’s posts, each leading to the item in its appropriate section. Sections will include: Open Source, Hardware, Software, Wi-Fi, New Products, Pay P2P, Guest Posts, OT, Register and Login.
With the new design, we’ll be able to attract more, and a much wider range of, advertising which will in turn allow Sixto and I to pay our mortgages and feed our families, look after the people who’ve been contributing for free, and hire new faces.
We have other plans, ie free Classified Ads and a streamed Speaker’s Corner where readers will get to post a short video on any given topic which we’ll host in a special area.
But that'll come.
For myself, I'm managing month-by-month financially, but I really need a Wi-Fi enabled laptop running on Linux. Or even a non-Wi-Fi portable running on Linux : ) It sits really badly with me to be criticizing Bill and the Boyz, using Windows while I do it. My present desktop is about to die, which means I’ll have to use my daughter’s. And that'll be no fun, believe me. She’s just turned nine. Need I say more? Heh. But at the moment, I don't have the wherewithal to replace my own computer so if there's anything left over, that's where it'll go.
Back to helping out, think of the $2,500 as a loan. We’ll pay it back by continuing to bring you stories and reports that haven’t been custom-crafted in someone’s corporate PR department
If you have a PayPal account, you can make a direct donation via the donations box at the bottom left ad column. If you don’t like that idea, please contact me and I’ll give you my snail-mail address.
Also, please let me know if you’d like to be included in the list of donors we plan to post, and if you’d like the amount mentioned. We’ll update every day as to how this is going.
Cheers! And thanks a lot ……
Jon & Sixto
Revision - 7:25 am Pacific: - Craig Lester over in the UK says he'll be chucking something into the pot at the end of the month when he gets paid. "I read your blog every day - for nothing," he says in an email. "So I think that does deserve some financial help. I mean I pay for a newspaper, so why should I not contribute something to you?"
Cheers, Craig : )
Thanks for the emails expressing support (and some asking for snail-mail info) If I don't answer immediately, it's because I'm writing copy, etc. Also, I'll be away from about 11:00 am until much later today. But I WILL get back to everyone : )

So if you would like to do a little something to help out p2pnet you can contact Jon via email over on their site or donate to them via paypal.