Fedora TV, the video quandary, and a request for advice (fwd)

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi.  It's time to talk about Fedora and video.
>
>  As many of you know, we tried to start the "Fedora TV" project last fall in
> association with the nice folks at Lulu.tv.  Unfortunately, between December
> 1st and January 31st, Lulu.tv went from a team of 4 engineers excited about
> Fedora as a test case for their technology, to one engineer trying
> desperately to hold things together, to out of business.  Which means that
> "Fedora TV," in its current incarnation, is deader than Elvis. I'll be
> working to pull the domain away from the current abandonware site in the
> next few days.
>
>  The original goal of Fedora TV was to provide a "Fedora-friendly" home for
> videos that we had some control over.  I think this is still a worthwhile
> strategic goal, but since we no longer have the help of dedicated engineers,
> I no longer think it's a sensible tactical goal.
>
>  The question that follows: "we've got lots of people who are excited about
> making Fedora videos.  What's the best way, in the short term, to gather
> those videos together to make them accessible?"
>
>  People are already using whatever solutions are available to them --
> YouTube, archive.org, blip.tv, and so forth.  Maybe we can leverage some of
> these solutions to create a comprehensive "Fedora-approved" solution. If we
> choose to go this route, there are, in my view, a number of criteria.
>
>  First, a couple of criteria that any solution *must* meet:
>
>  1. There must be a way to view these videos in Ogg Theora.  This is perhaps
> the most difficult requirement, but also the most important.  If we force
> Fedora users to download proprietary software to view Fedora videos, we
> lose.
>
>  2. There must be a one-click download of each video from *somewhere*.  A
> torrent tracker seems like a good idea and a way to conserve server space,
> but in practice, people ignore these videos.
>

>From the various emails I see on campus and lists, videos on
file-sharing get blocked more because its easier to block stuff than
deal with the various lawsuits. I think various blockers just look for
'video' content (mpeg, theora,etc) in a torrent and then just fin=fin
the connections.


>  3. The "one-click download" implies that there must be a centralized *and
> robust* hosting environment for these videos.  We should have confidence
> that any such hosting environment isn't likely to "go away" -- the trap we
> fell into with Lulu.tv.
>

That is the most expensive part of the deal. Contrary to the professor
complaining about his storage fees.. disks and network are not cheap.
Not if you want reliability.  The first thought that came to mind was
to see if the Fedora Mirrors would be a useful area. Building a
structure that mirrors could take the 'content into the cloud' (dear
god, if I used that catch phrase correctly, smite me now).

>  There are also, in my view, a few criteria that we *should* meet:
>
>  4. Users should be able to easily specify licensing of the videos.
>

What licenses would we use? What ones would be verbotten?

Do we have a screening process before the videos go up to make sure
that they are related to Fedora and not someone trying to use it as a
gnu porn upload site?

And from watching the daily MPAA/RIAA etc letters to the University..
what is the legal group that gets these subpoenas and evidence
preservation? Especially when someone puts up a 20 minute cut from
BladeRunner with some "commentary" to try and say it is a reasonable
quote on how Free Software should work. (Or they use a 20 second cut
and the MPAA still sends a takedown notice/subpeona/DMCA/ etc.) And
whether or not a 2 second music excerpt is allowed under copyright
law.. who gets stuck with the lawyers bill dealing with the lawsuit
from whoever currently 'owns' BabyGotBack.

Hopefully these are things that can be said "duh" about.. but it would
be something that would make mirrors more available if they didn't
have to worry about the legal lawsuit for aiding and abetting (or
whatever gets MPAA lawyers salivating).

The issue I see with Archive.org is that they must be dieing under
network/storage bills these days. The amount of movie and music I see
streaming to our university is pretty high. My guess is that the
flakiness is that they are having to pair back what they can offer
because the costs are going up... or what links they do have are
saturated and they are not in a position to upscale.



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"