India's Richest Man Takes On Zoom (techcrunch.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: India's Reliance Jio Platforms, which recently concluded a $15.2 billion fundraise run, is ready to enter a new business: Video conferencing. On Thursday evening, the firm -- backed by Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man -- formally launched JioMeet, its video-conference service that looks uncannily like Zoom. Like Zoom and Google Meet, JioMeet offers unlimited number of free calls in high definition (720p) to users and supports as many as 100 participants on a call. But interestingly, it's not imposing a short time limit on a call's duration. Jio Platforms says a call can be "up to 24 hours" long. The service currently has no paid plans and it's unclear if Jio Platforms, which has a reputation of giving away services for free for years, plans to change that.
Jio Platforms, which began beta testing JioMeet in May this year, said the video conferencing service offers "enterprise-grade" host controls. These include: password protection on each call, multi-device login support (up to five devices), and ability to share screen and collaborate. Other features include the ability to switch "seemingly" from one device to another, and a 'Safe Driving Mode' for when a participant is in commute. Hosts can also enable a 'waiting room' to ensure participants have to ask for permission to enter a call. The company did not provide any more details, including whether people outside of India could use the service. On its website, JioMeet claims all the meetings are "encrypted" but does not elaborate whether these calls are end-to-end encrypted.
Jio Platforms, which began beta testing JioMeet in May this year, said the video conferencing service offers "enterprise-grade" host controls. These include: password protection on each call, multi-device login support (up to five devices), and ability to share screen and collaborate. Other features include the ability to switch "seemingly" from one device to another, and a 'Safe Driving Mode' for when a participant is in commute. Hosts can also enable a 'waiting room' to ensure participants have to ask for permission to enter a call. The company did not provide any more details, including whether people outside of India could use the service. On its website, JioMeet claims all the meetings are "encrypted" but does not elaborate whether these calls are end-to-end encrypted.
Zoom (Score:3)
Needs to be taken on. It's servers are in China, the encryption turned out to server based (open at their end to siphoning and surveillance), and governments everywhere are using it for top-level meetings, some classified, all invite-only, notably the UK.
Are we just stupid?
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"Its servers are..."; 'fixed that for you' troll eaten...
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It all makes no sense what so ever. Computers have enough power to do that peer to peer over the internet, not servers required. What would you place you business meetings on someone else's server, the idea is crazy. It is a straight forward connection, you only need one computer to act a server only to set up the meeting and they can peer to peer from there. Sounds like a bunch of suckers begging to be data mined, to have all their business ideas, well and truly exposed.
Re: Zoom (Score:2)
It doesn't have make sense, as long as it makes cents.
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Let's meet up online. I suggest 10pm tonight.
Now, do you host or do I host. What's your IP address, and will it be the same at 10pm? Will you even be online at 10pm, or will you turn up two minutes late, making me continually try and connect for 8 minutes (because I was early).
Or we could use a server that's always-on, that knows we have a meeting scheduled, that lets us both connect when we're ready. And our 18 mutual friends that will be joining us.
Since we're using that server we can also now allow it to
India better than China? (Score:2)
Are you crazy? India is just as bad if not worse. Actually all countries are pretty bad. Maybe some African country due to pack of resources?
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Foolish to ignore software freedom (Score:2)
"Stupid" is pretty strong but ignorant seems fair. Ignorant to think that the issues you identify are resolved by switching from Zoom to this other proprietary meeting system which, for all we know, is capable of doing the same thing. Ignorant for thinking that nationality plays a role here—these systems don't become trustworthy because they originate from one country instead of another. Software is deemed trustworthy by inspection, improvement, and we help other computer users by sharing. Thus softwa
No Linux version (Score:2)
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The thing is, Zoom _is_ bad.
Jitsi Meet exists (Score:2)
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Except that these solutions are promoted as an alternative to physical presence, and have caught on fire this year thanks to the Wuhan virus. When that's the scope of the interaction being suggested - many people in different rooms simulating a situation where they're in one room w/o needing the 6', masks and so on, then cutting off video or audio streams for participants is not an acceptable solution.
It would be one thing if it were just a meeting of 2 'free software' disciples, but if we're talking abo
End-to-end encryption? (Score:2)
How can you make end-to-end encryption if you have a 1:100 relation, without each peer uploading a 100 streams to a 100 clients, and each peer receiving a 100 streams from a 100 others? Is that even possible?
For all i know, end-to-end encryption would only work between 2 peers. But maybe there are mathematical tricks to set up such 1:N encryption, if so, please enlighten me.
Re: End-to-end encryption? (Score:2)
One shared session key, encrypted individually for each client.
It's to easy just to use Jitsi (Score:2)
or BigBlueButton, isn't it?
maybe use other free tools? (Score:2)
China controls zoom and their recent laws in HK are written so as to apply to people outside China/HK. Don't use zoom if you ever intend to visit China.
Maybe google meet? Google is evil but they already have all our information and they don't arrest people with trumped up charges yet.
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No, all Google does is threaten to demonetize the online publications we read if their comments section don't agree w/ them. It's the closest thing to China's surveillance state
Ideally, I'd like to see a videoconferencing solution from the US, based on US servers. But failing that, I'd pick an Indian one over anything from China. As for how corrupt India may be inside, it's a state to state issue, but nowhere near the same as being surveiled by a totalitarian regime like Beijing. And say what you will
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