I'm in two minds about public media outlets like RNZ publishing the video they produce on YouRube;
youtube.com/channel/UCp4OXwfZE…
It makes sense for publicly-funded media to publish anywhere that members of the public might be, especially where we don't have to pay. In fact, any media funded 100% with public money ought to be under a CreativeCommons BY-SA license, or even placed in the public domain. So *anyone* can publish it, anywhere they like.
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Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •So on the one hand, I'm happy to see video made by RNZ on YouRube. A place where huge numbers of people currently browse video, and can watch it free of charge.
Plus RNZ is making use of corporate video hosting without paying for it. Video is more expensive to distribute online than any other digital media except games. So on the face of it, that's smart.
(2/?)
Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •OTOH, by serving video *only* on YouRube (AFAICT), RNZ are forcing the public to use an ad-funded service to watch video funded 100% by us.
Also, like most corporate DataFarms now, YouRube forbids third-party apps, and tries to block them. So we're forced to watch on their proprietary apps, unless we happen to know about unreliable hacks like NewPipe on Android, or Invidio.us on the web. Here's that RNZ channel on an Invidio.us server;
inv.nadeko.net/channel/UCp4OXw…
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Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •Another issue raised is one of archiving. Are RNZ keeping copies of all this video they produce at public expense, on computers they control? After all, overseas-owned media corporations have proved to be poor stewards of our media history;
rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/…
thespinoff.co.nz/society/10-11…
Hopefully RNZ are keeping copies, with robust backups, on publicly-owned computers. How much more would it cost to have one of these computers running a streaming server? Using a package like PeerTube?
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Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •Imagine RNZ hosted their own video and PeerTube server, in an onshore datahub under their control. If a video embedded on their website went viral we'd all be helping to seed it to each other, thanks to the WebTorrent integration in PT.
We could watch publicly-funded video without any dependencies on corporate DataFarms, at a fraction of the cost of doing the same thing using AWS or Azure.
(5/?)
Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •RNZ probably can't do this alone, certainly not within their current budget. But most of the funding needed for public media datahubs would be in establishing the infrastructure. Buying servers and racks, connecting them to fat pipes, and setting them up with proper cooling, security, etc.
It would also need dedicated staff with the skills to look after the hardware, keep all the software up-to-date, and make sure the server architecture is resilient and secure. So how could that work?
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Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •My advice to a government willing to invest in a new public media entity would be to make it the media equivalent of Chorus. Or ONTRACK, which owned the rail network before being folded into KiwiRail.
An infrastructure steward, providing broadcast and streaming services to all public media. Which could be created by merging Kordia, the AM network, and any other publicly-owned broadcast infrastructure. All of which is at risk of being underfunded into oblivion and corporatised.
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