Youtube ditches Flash, but it hardly matters

These terms have been in the works for a while. But them offering such horrible terms I think are actually less of a problem then people saying that YouTube are “the only game in town”, when they simply aren’t. You can use any number of services or software to stream music video on the net. I have done so myself, and never used YouTube because I couldn’t abide their terms even a few years back. Instead of people complaining that they are hostage to some company, they can use another. If people want to have it both ways - assert your independence and ethics and patronize some giant corporation who pisses on those things - then something needs to give. When people insist on using the biggest, most inconsiderate services possible, and ignore the many viable alternatives, this is what they get.

This doesn’t make such practices fair or right at all - but it does IMO make people’s choices puzzling with regards to who they affiliate.

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Huh, that was the whole article! Changes it up for Guardian refuseniks, I suppose.
I’m not sure whose job it is to point out what Mozilla Shumway would have or will have done for propriety if the DRM plugin isn’t there to lawyer recording devices out of ubiquity, but the blush of enhancement is gone rancid (except for seasoning cast iron, maybe.)
Unity is another one of those off-reservation executables. Let a thousand walled probiotic retrotonic solutions bloom.

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YouTube sans Flash SUCKS. Buffering has made my 50Mbps connection all but unusable.

What services do you recommend as alternatives, and how prevalent are they on the web? The reason we ‘need’ YouTube is because it’s what everybody uses. We need FaceBook because that’s where all our friends are (or snapchat, I guess).

Patreon exists because ‘everybody’ has their videos on YouTube and there wasn’t a better way for artists to be directly paid for their work by those who enjoyed it and to reach a large number of people. You don’t get heard in any meaningful way unless you’re where everyone is looking.

But if there’s a better alternative, I want to know, please share.

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I don’t use many services, but there are many of them out there. Try doing a search for “video streaming services” or “video streaming protocol”. Here’s a decent list of possible options to look into: List of streaming media systems - Wikipedia
The most recent one I used is Vimeo, and I was pleased with it.

I have no idea. They all seem to be accessible. They each have their own statistics, and I prefer to deal with the technical side of things.

Then people are creating their own problem. Your term “prevalent” is rather telling, to prevail is to win a contest. If you actually want a prevalent service, then you get to deal with precisely these kinds of shite companies. It’s the digital equivalent of requiring everything you to buy to be at Wal-Mart, because you can’t possibly be bothered to go elsewhere. Like a guy told me at Home Depot told me once, “If we don’t have it, you actually don’t need it.” To which I replied with choice words! If they feel that everybody is boxed into their service, then that’s the treatment we get. I don’t need a company or service which has a fat head for “beating” others, I need one which can do what I need done, which can satisfy my criteria.

This sounds rather crass to me. Meaning is based upon communication, and as such doesn’t have anything to do with pushing for quantity over quality. One of the principles of general semantics is that true communication is only possible between equals. A browser and content provider on YT might have a similar power balance to each other - but not to YT itself - at least according to YT terms and practices. It’s worth avoiding for the same reason as music labels, because their pimps deal amounts to controlling your distribution.

There’s also the somewhat separate problem of artistic egoism, the notion that it somehow matters how many people are interested in your work. It might be more factual to suggest that it doesn’t matter at all. Anything not worth doing for its own sake probably doesn’t really need to be done. The art/media world attracts many interesting, but unfortunately, also often vain people.

Hopefully, someday, people will realize that the internet need not be about “one stop shopping”, and that people can actually stream content themselves, without any help. At least people wised up sufficiently to create content on their own, without institutional backing. But it seems they are getting fooled into assuming that they cannot distribute their own work without the help of dinosaurs, which is sad and not even remotely true.

Perhaps you do. I was guessing that you were baiting me, and were going to dismiss anything I suggested as being “too inconvenient”, even more so than abusive corporate cartels.

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But your answer to everything always is that all our problems would go away if we abandoned the real world and built a utopia instead. That’s not always the most helpful approach in practice.

Right now it may be mainly a handful of big corporations pushing for DRM. However there are thousands upon thousands of websites that are open not out of conviction, but because so far the alternatives often aren’t worth the hassle. Once painless DRM is here, there is a risk that we will suddently find the open web rather small.

This bears no resemblance to what I recommended, here or elsewhere. I didn’t offer you some impotent BS fantasy, I offered my experience, what I have done. Along with a link to list of tools anyone can use. If you really think that is “utopian” to actually use online services which don’t suck, then I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t imagine you being motivated to do much besides complain. It is a negative attitude to simply complain about what people offer without trying something else or doing it yourself. How “the real world” exists is because people realize it.

Big corporations are precisely who push DRM, because they perceive it to be in their interests. It’s not because there is anything difficult about implementing it. DRM has never been painless. Does a “small” web prevent you or I from publishing our own work any way we choose? Do I really need a big web if people prefer it to be like a shopping mall? What you are seeing here is one browser plugin, being discussed for one web site. You frame the problem like a consumer, not a network person. There are other browsers, other websites, other CODECs, and we can make them. That’s why we have them now.

If most people don’t want DRM, and don’t benefit from it, they won’t use it. Maybe you can help to persuade them that the internet isn’t dictated my a minority of corporate stooges, that they don’t have supernatural powers. Most of the griping I encounter here is from those who seem to assume that it’s always other people have the power to establish and change how things are done. It’s disempowering, and turns people into consumers of policy just like some suppose they are consumers of network services. Why isn’t corporate interest pushing for DRM “utopian”? Because what they want for you is more practical than what I outlined? When I signed onto BB I thought that this was a sort of hub of DIY culture and hacking.

Problems do not “go away”, they get solved. Sometimes they get solved more readily when you put forth the effort than when you hope somebody else will fix it. As the saying goes: “Wish in one hand, and spit in the other.”

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[quote=“popobawa4u, post:29, topic:51517”]
Big corporations are precisely who push DRM, because they perceive it to be in their interests. It’s not because there is anything difficult about implementing it.[/quote]Implementing it isn’t really the problem. Establishing a standard that they can rely on is.

[quote]Does a “small” web prevent you or I from publishing our own work any way we choose?[/quote]No, of course not.

[quote]You frame the problem like a consumer, not a network person.[/quote]That’s because we are all consumers, too, and this is an issue that affects us in our capacity as consumers. [quote]There are other browsers, other websites, other CODECs, and we can make them. That’s why we have them now.[/quote]Sure, just as it is possible to eat only locally grown organic food or wear only clothes you made yourself. And just as in those cases it will come at a cost. Even if you don’t think you are missing much, it can still create additional hurdles economically and in terms of skills. Many people won’t be willing to make the sacrifices for openness and in many cases you won’t really be able to blame them.

[quote]If most people don’t want DRM, and don’t benefit from it, they won’t use it.[/quote]I agree as far as it goes. My fear is that many businesses will embrace it enthusiastically while most users don’t have very strong feelings about it. Not being locked out of mainstream content and services will be benefit enough to keep most of them on board, especially if opting out actually takes more effort.

[quote]As the saying goes: “Wish in one hand, and spit in the other.”
[/quote]I don’t think that’s the part where we disagree.

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Nah, Vimeo is one, and maybe I need to give it more of a chance. Where but Youtube can I go to watch, share and discuss 80s music videos on my blog? I am certain there’s a future where I will want to be free of Youtube, I don’t know where else I can go.

No such thing.

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