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The fact that Google buoyed Youtube's sinking boat by plugging the leaks with money does not mean that Youtube shouldn't have collapsed under it's own weight an

The fact that Google buoyed Youtube's sinking boat by plugging the leaks with money does not mean that Youtube shouldn't have collapsed under it's own weight and been allowed to die. Maybe then, we would've gotten a free, open, p2p alternative out of the ashes. Now we have DMCA takedowns, region-locked videos, and unskippable commercials. The sooner someone disrupts youtube, the better the world will be.

rockdoe 12y ago
Let's not forget YouTube can also arbitrarily decide what video sizes competing browsers are allowed to receive, or what DRM system they should have implemented. Good luck shipping something that doesn't work with YouTube. I'd say their position of power is greater than Netflix.
- blackoil 12y ago
  Killing youtube is not solution for that, you can wish Facebook etc will create genuine competition.
pjc50 12y ago
DMCA takedowns and region locks are a legal/social problem, not a technological one. Look at what happened to PopcornTime. You can still self-host your own videos, but then it's hard to monetize them to pay for the bandwidth. Remember that this is a "two sided market": you have to bring viewers and video producers to it. And the commercials are blocked successfully by AdBlock.
- rockdoe 12y ago
  DMCA takedowns and region locks are a legal/social problem, not a technological one. That seems like oversimplifying matters. The way Google automatically identifies infringing content is very much a technological issue, as well as the vast problems that it causes when it's wrong.
  - throwawaykf05 12y ago
    Given that legally they must remove infringing content, what other choice do they have but to automate the identification process? And how often is it wrong?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      The DMCA specifically removes any obligation they would have to actively police user-submitted content, so it's simply not true that they legally must do so.
      - throwawaykf05 12y ago
        That's right, but the scale at which infringing content is uploaded to YouTube can make it possible for somebody to make a case that the DMCA doesn't quite cut it. I don't think anyone wants that. Because even if you assume DMCA is sufficient, at this scale what is the alternative? The content owners would essentially have to implement their own content ID like system to find infringing content (which they already do to some extent), but rather than having hundreds of different stakeholders implement a hundred different systems (or the same system hundreds of times) externally, it's simply more efficient to centralize it at the point where the content is stored. Not to mention that the more likely outcome would be a massive lawsuit rather than content creators bothering to implement this system on their own. Also, if YouTube wants to make money, let's face it, they need content people really want, which is what the big content creators own. Pretty sure they have this content ID system to keep those folks happy. The issues are still less technical and more legal or business-related.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        > The content owners would essentially have to implement their own content ID like system to find infringing content (which they already do to some extent), but rather than having hundreds of different stakeholders implement a hundred different systems (or the same system hundreds of times) externally, it's simply more efficient to centralize it at the point where the content is stored. There's a big difference between the claim that content owners would do something similar anyway to provide a basis for DMCA takedown notices and that it is more efficient for Google to do it for them and the claim that it is legally mandatory for Google to do it. > Also, if YouTube wants to make money, let's face it, they need content people really want, which is what the big content creators own. Pretty sure they have this content ID system to keep those folks happy. There's also a big difference between the claim that it is beneficial to YouTube in terms of positive relations with people it wants to do business with and the claim that it is legally mandatory for them to do it.
amelius 12y ago
Also, downloading of Youtube content is still not possible officially. It is almost like another big company who refused, for years, to implement a PDF export function into their flagship word-processor product.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  Refused?? Adobe straight up threatened to go antitrust on their ass if they did: http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/06/6973-2/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/06/6973-2/
nick89 12y ago
> Maybe then, we would've gotten a free, open, p2p alternative out of the ashes. P2P is not the answer. It may work for the 1% (popular videos), but for the 99% it does not provide a viable alternative for on-demand content... I don't want to wait 5 hours for a 3 year old how-to video to stream from a single seed with limited upload capacity :(. E.g. Look at torrents. Popular ones are readily available, but obscure or old torrents will be lucky to have a single seed.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  What percentage of the bandwidth is consumed by popular videos, and what percentage by the long tail? P2P can alleviate a big chunk of the popular content bandwidth. Not sure how much that is, though. In a P2P world, if you're uploading a long tail video of your cat that only your family will watch, maybe it's up to you to "seed that torrent" - or more realistically, keep your machine running so that your peer can serve the content to theirs. It's the move from desktops to mobile and laptop devices that run only sporadically that is the real problem for P2P.
fsk 12y ago
Someone can't "disrupt youtube" until costs come down to the point that Google's search/ad cash cow isn't subsidizing YouTube anymore. At some point, hosting video yourself on an aws instance will be feasible. Until then, we're probably stuck with YouTube.
- anonbanker 12y ago
  The fact that you keep saying "you can't" is why you're not creating a startup to do exactly that. TPB was floating this idea without funding almost a decade ago. it didn't take off because Cohen's Bittorrent Sync was implied to be open, and the project died in anticipation of the better (standard/trusted) technology.

rockdoe 12y ago

Let's not forget YouTube can also arbitrarily decide what video sizes competing browsers are allowed to receive, or what DRM system they should have implemented. Good luck shipping something that doesn't work with YouTube. I'd say their position of power is greater than Netflix.

blackoil 12y ago
Killing youtube is not solution for that, you can wish Facebook etc will create genuine competition.

pjc50 12y ago

DMCA takedowns and region locks are a legal/social problem, not a technological one. Look at what happened to PopcornTime. You can still self-host your own videos, but then it's hard to monetize them to pay for the bandwidth. Remember that this is a "two sided market": you have to bring viewers and video producers to it. And the commercials are blocked successfully by AdBlock.

rockdoe 12y ago
DMCA takedowns and region locks are a legal/social problem, not a technological one. That seems like oversimplifying matters. The way Google automatically identifies infringing content is very much a technological issue, as well as the vast problems that it causes when it's wrong.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  Given that legally they must remove infringing content, what other choice do they have but to automate the identification process? And how often is it wrong?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    The DMCA specifically removes any obligation they would have to actively police user-submitted content, so it's simply not true that they legally must do so.
    - throwawaykf05 12y ago
      That's right, but the scale at which infringing content is uploaded to YouTube can make it possible for somebody to make a case that the DMCA doesn't quite cut it. I don't think anyone wants that. Because even if you assume DMCA is sufficient, at this scale what is the alternative? The content owners would essentially have to implement their own content ID like system to find infringing content (which they already do to some extent), but rather than having hundreds of different stakeholders implement a hundred different systems (or the same system hundreds of times) externally, it's simply more efficient to centralize it at the point where the content is stored. Not to mention that the more likely outcome would be a massive lawsuit rather than content creators bothering to implement this system on their own. Also, if YouTube wants to make money, let's face it, they need content people really want, which is what the big content creators own. Pretty sure they have this content ID system to keep those folks happy. The issues are still less technical and more legal or business-related.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > The content owners would essentially have to implement their own content ID like system to find infringing content (which they already do to some extent), but rather than having hundreds of different stakeholders implement a hundred different systems (or the same system hundreds of times) externally, it's simply more efficient to centralize it at the point where the content is stored. There's a big difference between the claim that content owners would do something similar anyway to provide a basis for DMCA takedown notices and that it is more efficient for Google to do it for them and the claim that it is legally mandatory for Google to do it. > Also, if YouTube wants to make money, let's face it, they need content people really want, which is what the big content creators own. Pretty sure they have this content ID system to keep those folks happy. There's also a big difference between the claim that it is beneficial to YouTube in terms of positive relations with people it wants to do business with and the claim that it is legally mandatory for them to do it.

amelius 12y ago

Also, downloading of Youtube content is still not possible officially. It is almost like another big company who refused, for years, to implement a PDF export function into their flagship word-processor product.

throwawaykf05 12y ago
Refused?? Adobe straight up threatened to go antitrust on their ass if they did: http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/06/6973-2/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/06/6973-2/

nick89 12y ago

> Maybe then, we would've gotten a free, open, p2p alternative out of the ashes. P2P is not the answer. It may work for the 1% (popular videos), but for the 99% it does not provide a viable alternative for on-demand content... I don't want to wait 5 hours for a 3 year old how-to video to stream from a single seed with limited upload capacity :(. E.g. Look at torrents. Popular ones are readily available, but obscure or old torrents will be lucky to have a single seed.

throwawaykf05 12y ago
What percentage of the bandwidth is consumed by popular videos, and what percentage by the long tail? P2P can alleviate a big chunk of the popular content bandwidth. Not sure how much that is, though. In a P2P world, if you're uploading a long tail video of your cat that only your family will watch, maybe it's up to you to "seed that torrent" - or more realistically, keep your machine running so that your peer can serve the content to theirs. It's the move from desktops to mobile and laptop devices that run only sporadically that is the real problem for P2P.

fsk 12y ago

Someone can't "disrupt youtube" until costs come down to the point that Google's search/ad cash cow isn't subsidizing YouTube anymore. At some point, hosting video yourself on an aws instance will be feasible. Until then, we're probably stuck with YouTube.

anonbanker 12y ago
The fact that you keep saying "you can't" is why you're not creating a startup to do exactly that. TPB was floating this idea without funding almost a decade ago. it didn't take off because Cohen's Bittorrent Sync was implied to be open, and the project died in anticipation of the better (standard/trusted) technology.