From Archive.org, Free Multimedia Hosting for Life 327
powerline22 writes "From the people who gave you the Internet Archive comes Ourmedia, a place for grassroots media to flourish. Upload anything, maybe a video, some pictures, your custom applescript, and it gets hosted for free, for life. Drupal is hosting the site, and the Internet Archive is providing hosting and bandwidth for the files."
Re:And it failed the test (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How Long? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ummm, (Score:5, Informative)
nice ! (Score:2, Informative)
jamendo [jamendo.com] does it too, for CC music albums, and they use bittorrent.
Re:Best usage (Score:4, Informative)
Suposedly it's on the site rules too, but can't get on them because of the slashdotting.. :)
Re:Ummm, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If it sounds too good to be true ... (Score:5, Informative)
The Internet Archive has been around since 1996. We're funded by webcrawls-by-contract and by the Brewster Kahle Foundation. The Archive is a non-profit organization. We have no creditors. So relax.
It is in our charter to perpetuate our archives forever, and it's a charge we take seriously. As our hard drives go bad (and oh do they ever!) they are replaced by new ones, and we are protected from data loss by mirroring our archives across machines, and across data centers in different countries.
-- TTK
Re:How Long? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:If it sounds too good to be true ... (Score:3, Informative)
What I posted was only half the story .. in full, the Archive gets its funding the same way that traditional libraries do, through grants from foundations, donations from private entities, and in-kind donations from corporations. The K/A Foundation and crawls-by-contract are just the sources of income with which I am most familiar (I'm just a dumb-ass programmer, so that part of the business isn't very visible to me, thus the oversight).
-- TTK
A little known media archive .. (Score:3, Informative)
If you own content that might be useful to Wikipedia or the other Wikimedia projects [wikimediafoundation.org], such as holidy photos from a far-away country, please upload it to the Commons. If you don't want to learn the ways of the wiki, you can use the newly created (free) file upload service [wikimedia.org], where Wikimedia volunteers will tag and upload your files for you. The only condition is that you put them under a free license or in the public domain.
Remember, all the Wikimedia projects are run by a non-profit organization that depends on donations [wikimediafoundation.org] from people like you.
No porn or pirated works, but anything else works (Score:2, Informative)
As far as "only copyrighted works" -- not quite. We'll host any materials: public domain texts and movies, GNU General License software, works that fall within well-accepted fair use standards. And, of course, the stuff you create yourself.
We're trying to help enable remix culture, so that people will be able to find works they can freely build upon, remix and recirculate. Without getting a call from your friendly RIAA/MPAA legal team.
-- jd, one of the founders
Re:If it sounds too good to be true ... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the UI (the page linked to by slashdot here) isn't hosted at The Archive, for better or for worse.
The non-waybackmachine web servers (ten, at present) at archive.org proper are load-balanced via keepalived, and should stand up okay before a slashdotting. We learned things about the limitations of our webfarm from hosting the tsunami videos in the wake of that disaster, and beefed them up significantly.
Non-waybackmachine web traffic usually hovers around 40 to 60 hits per second, here, and we should be able to handle four or six times that before we start dropping anyone's connections.
-- TTK
Re:GREAT for independent musicians (Score:2, Informative)
I know of podcasters who've been socked with $500/month bills because of bandwidth use. This solves their problem (they can point to their video or audio file on our servers from their own site).
BTW, we host all the media files on archive.org and all the accompanying pages on Drupal, and the performance problems you're seeing today is because of a too-small server on Drupal. They're working on that tonight.
jd
Coders needed for open source project (Score:5, Informative)
What the hell -- we're a free, not-for-profit, open-source media project. It doesn't get more Slashdotty than that.
We're looking for coders to help out on Ourmedia -- to make it a Slashdotter's multimedia wet dream.
The Ourmedia Project is relying on open-source developers to build new functionalities for the site -- such as media ratings, new RSS features, playlists, social networking, license searches, improved taxonomies -- and to help build a global registry connecting a network of grassroots media sites.
That means six months from now we don't want to be just a destination website -- we want open-source schemas that will let any site hook into a global network of freely accessible grassroots media.
But we can't pull that off unless more expert coders pitch in. (Here's our current project team [ourmedia.org] and advisory board [open-media.org].) (Apologies, we're adding more servers tonight.)
See our Volunteer page [ourmedia.org] for details. Pass it along. Or ignore this, as you wish. :~)
-- jd (email [mailto]), co-founder
FAQ on OurMedia.org (Score:2, Informative)
!: Yes, and we'll even give you a free blog.
?: Is there an Ourmedia community?
!: Yes -- many communities. You can use Ourmedia for any legitimate purpose: as a social meeting space, a gathering spot to diss Big Media, a learning center for tips on how to create compelling video or photos, or for other reasons. It's up to you.
?: Hey, MP3s by David Byrne and the Beastie Boys are on Ourmedia. What are they doing here?
!:Ourmedia is for amateurs, hobbyists and professionals. We don't discriminate against artists just because they're under contract with a music label. We try to help bands, DJs and solo musicians achieve greater visibility, so it wouldn't make sense to banish artists who have achieved commercial success. Ourmedia is about inclusiveness.
?: Many artists like Byrne, the Beasties, Le Tigre and others are letting you remix, re-create and recirculate their works -- for free -- under a Creative Commons license.
!: I didn't upload my stuff, but I see it on Ourmedia anyway. Why?
?: If you assigned your work a Creative Commons license in the past, that means you agreed to share it with anyone. Ourmedia is about exposing and sharing works, so someone probably took the initiative to place your work on our servers for sharing. Please feel free to make changes to your work's media page; we'll make sure you have full access.
!: If someone uploaded your material to Ourmedia and it does not have a Creative Commons license, that means the person violated our Site rules and we'll remove the material. See our Deletion and retraction policy.
?: Why can't I leave anonymous comments?
!: This is a community. Only members may blog, post comments and participate in our Forums. Registering takes only a few moments.
?: Your site doesn't look complete.
!: Ourmedia is in alpha, which means we're still in our early stages (next comes beta). Instead of spending years working on the site behind closed doors, we decided to ask other volunteers to join us in building out the site and adding new functionalities. We're an all-volunteer open-source effort. Not to brag, but we've already come farther than a lot of sites with a full-time paid staff. And here is what's on our drawing boards.
?: Dude, there's some pretty harsh stuff on Ourmedia!
!: We can pretty much guarantee that you can find material on Ourmedia that you won't like. That's the price of visiting an open library and global town square. This isn't a watered-down, PG-rated, safe-for-the-FCC mass medium. Our Site rules explain that as a global repository, we draw the line at pornographic and infringing materials, but we are not in the business of censoring media we disagree with.
?: No porn, you say?
!: No porn. Go away.