Wikimedia Trying P2P Video Distribution 85
bigmammoth writes "One potential problem with campaigns and programs to increase video on Wikimedia sites is that video is many times more costly to distribute than text and images. The P2P-Next consortium has created an HTML5 streaming BitTorrent browser add-on to try and help experiment with ways to reduce the costs of video distribution. As described in a Wikimedia tech blog post, once the SwarmPlayer add-on is installed, and when using the multimedia beta, video on the site will be streamed via the hybrid HTTP / BitTorrent SwarmPlayer. For smooth playback the Swarmplayer downloads high priority pieces over HTTP while getting low priority bits from the BitTorrent swarm. The same technology is available for experimentation with any site via the standalone version of the Kaltura HTML5 Media library."
Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure this player can be used for more than encyclopaedic media, even for cats. As long as it's free to anyone to put on their sites, it's a competition on the Youtube business.
Also, even if we think it's absurd, people see Colour in data and that won't change soon.
Re:Why not just use Youtube? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) less intrusive ads
2) you would be relying on a commercial third-party, which is bad. What if Youtube suddenly decides to go pay-per-view? What if it closes?
3) you, and not Google, should get to decide what is "fair use"
Re:Why not just use Youtube? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not being at the whims of a private company that can do what they please with the videos, including censoring?
It's not about Wikimedia having control, it's about not giving control to some company. Bittorrent puts us all in control.
Re:Why not just use Youtube? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's quite naive. First of all youtube would ban a lot of media that wikimedia would not (a lot of biology media regarding human anatomy for instance...) secondly youtube is of the stance that "there's no such thing as fair use".
Re:Network neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
Network neutrality is about the ISPs treating data as equal, not about the clients or servers.
Re:What about unpopular videos (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst-case performance probably isn't appreciably worse than it is now, and the best-case performance is much better, so the average is probably at least a little bit better. Furthermore, getting code like this into more people's browsers can increase the accessibility of the technology for other sites. So even if it's a dead-end for Wikimedia, it's a potential boon to video sites.
Really, if it doesn't bother Wikimedia, the only ones bothered by it should be ISPs and content creators who want to be takedown-happy.