4 ms·

It seems kinda weird to me to portray them as greedy. Even if the root of this decision is because they want money, don't they need to fund the content somehow?

• tomc1985 6y ago
  Because my statement isn't necessarily about Khan Academy, but anyone hosting cloud-based video content. Data wants to be free, as they say, and digital economies are a world of abundance where copying is free or nearly so. When a provider doesn't align with that they are imposing physical-world scarcity economics in a place where it doesn't belong. It feels like people are trying to erase fundamental concepts like files or downloading, and instead offering a bullshit rental model where anything you can do on the net is at the pleasure of the content owner. It is disempowering to users as it changes them from masters of their domain to digital peons in CC's feudalistic kingdoms. That is what I mean by 'greedy'. If you publish something online, it is out there for good. You cannot try to delete it and you cannot try to control it. You do not have a right to try to profit on the content itself because, again, data is free and no matter how much one might want to control data, ultimately they can't. DRM, ads, subscription gates -- these are all additional layers of crap that we have built to cage that data and prevent it from being freed. It is a shame that we as a people cannot handle this world of abundance, and that the tools we use to navigate it grant us less and less control with every new DRM scheme or subscription service. There are plenty of ways to monetize without locking down bits.
  • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > It feels like people are trying to erase fundamental concepts like files or downloading, and instead offering a bullshit rental model where anything you can do on the net is at the pleasure of the content owner. It is disempowering to users as it changes them from masters of their domain to digital peons in CC's feudalistic kingdoms. This is why I find it so disheartening that Khan Academy doesn't allow downloads natively. I understand the incentives for a provider like Youtube are overwhelmingly in favor of streaming-only, but an educational nonprofit like Khan Academy? If even they don't offer downloads, what hope is there?