A user-empowered reflector capable of data processing has been successfully demonstrated to create overlay networks for synchronous multimedia distribution. The centralistic approach however poses tough limits on scalability, robustness, and pervasiveness. In this paper we describe our approach to building networks of active elements (generalization of the reflectors) capable of providing better scalability and robustness while retaining user-empowered approach. We present a prototype implementation based on JXTA peer-to-peer framework and discuss its operation in adverse networking environments with firewalls and network address translation (NAT).