
LBRY – A decentralized YouTube alternative - pkd
https://lbry.io/what
======
akanet
The LBRY team had a reddit AMA earlier wherein many redditors asked some very
pointed (though often impolite) questions that I think were not answered very
well by the team:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50tyub/were_the_nerds...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50tyub/were_the_nerds_behind_lbry_a_decentralized).

The top comment, reproduced verbatim:

Suppose i created address with name of my company lbry/:Mycompany and i bought
this address at 1 LBC.

On that address i will be posting my music that i created myself. This address
becomes very popular. People often going on that address and buy music created
by me. After 4 months it appears my music that you can find on address
lbry/:Mycompany becomes very popular. So some guys came in, he sees that many
people come in to that address to buy stuff. So he buys lbry/:Mycompany with
1.1 LBC and started posting his content and sells it. So the first guy who
created lbry/:Mycompany in a lose position here. He make this address very
popular to attend and then he loses it. And right now it is a headeache for
him to try buy back this address on greater price or make another name.

So what is the point of such system?

~~~
lumberjack
>So what is the point of such system?

Let's go deeper. There's three parties involved in this market. Users,
platform providers and content creators. The users dictate the terms. Where
they go the others follow.

What is this whole technology providing for the users? Nothing, at least
nothing of mass appeal.

It's a losing strategy.

The best example of this is Ebay/Paypal. They always put the buyers first for
the same reason and Ebay alternatives who don't never catch on because the
buyers don't want to use a platform that is not biased towards them.

~~~
thecourier
Lumberjack, I agree with you. this is technology just for the sake of
technology. As a user I don't see any kind of valid use case.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I need to see a more compelling use case than the "small
guy producing content", considering YouTube DOES exist

------
mrkgnao
> What happens when you build your business on YouTube or Amazon and they
> change fees? Or Apple drops your content because the Premier of China
> thought your comedy went too far? Only LBRY consists of a _known, promised
> set of rules_ that no one can unilaterally change. LBRY provides this by
> doing something unique: leaving the users in control rather than demanding
> that control for itself.

> It is also worth noting that in the event that LBRY received notice that
> either name contained an illegitimate copy of Spider Man, LBRY would
> dutifully and quickly put that content id on a blacklist, blocking discovery
> or purchase via any legal services. LBRY and users of LBRY are still subject
> to the DMCA and other relevant laws of their respective countries.

These two goals -- being subject to the DMCA (and similar laws), and promising
a predetermined, immutable set of rules -- are incompatible.

As long as you intend to abide by $LEGAL_CODE, the set of laws you follow is
not fixed since it is subject to changes in $LEGAL_CODE. What happens if the
Premier of China, to use the example from the page, decides to make it illegal
for some content to be viewed in China?

Of course, this is in addition to the whole problem of the bidding system
being flawed since there is (apparently?) no concept of ownership, as opposed
to a continuously running auction where the highest bidder as of some time
controls an address. The idea is unquestionably elegant, but leaves open the
potential of some evil party with significant funds taking control of your
address, where you _need_ to buy the address back, causing, e.g. some sort of
Gawker-esque financial ruin. The only way to avoid this kind of thing is to
have some kind of judicial arbitration. I suppose people still remember the
whole Ethereum fiasco.

Besides, there may be two "reasonable" addresses for some content, or more. I
find it highly unlikely that there is some kind of economics-assured
"existence and uniqueness" theorem that assures otherwise. How about
"/wonderfullife" vs. "/itsawonderfullife"? You will _need_ some kind of
signing or cryptographically robust identification system to ensure
authenticity, because you risk not being able to keep up with a stream of DMCA
takedown orders against YouTube-style indiscriminate uploading of copyrighted
material.

~~~
user101010
I agree with your point about owning the LBRY address. The article kept
referring to the people who value the name the most being the ones who
eventually own the addresses, but that doesn't stop big enough freebooters
from squating on address smaller creators with less funds need. I'm thinking
of YouTube folks who may have to compete with large media firms without the
advantage of an arbitration system. To add to that, the fact that address
ownership isn't permanent also weakens the position of small creators.

I'm hopeful, though. I like the idea of a decentralized content platform.

~~~
generalk
> I'm hopeful, though. I like the idea of a decentralized > content platform.

We have one of those, the WWW.

What we need is a decentralized method for the social aspects: identity
management, networking (following/liking, etc), etc. We had some of that with
the early blogosphere stuff, but we largely let it slide into oblivion.

~~~
user101010
I suppose the Internet is a "content platform," but that's in the most basic
sense of the term. I mean things like YouTube and Vessel that are trying to
bring together all those things you mention. If anything, I wouldn't begin to
consider a service to be a content platform unless it had those things.

------
developer2
I've never been this aggressive in a HN comment: change the fucking title.
This is not a showcase for a YouTube alternative. It's a fucking advertisement
for a service that has nothing to do with YouTube-like services. It's AOL
keywords with a bidding system - for any site or service. This kind of
clickbait bullshit, listing a well-known product like "YouTube" for the sole
purpose of gaining more traction, is unacceptable. HN has lately been falling
into the same trap that killed Slashdot - falsely labelled posts, providing
clickbait views for someone's startup that would _never_ make the front page
if the title matched the content of the submission.

~~~
user101010
The submission definitely mentions YouTube and Netflix as services it could
replace, as well as bemoaning the centralized nature of many content
platforms. I think the title is perfectly accurate.

~~~
okket
> I think the title is perfectly accurate.

No. A cranked up, ludicrous vision of the future is not a valid base for an
accurate title. The bidding system has nothing to do with YouTube. The only
reason why the developers are mentioning YouTube is getting attention, SEO.

The worst thing about these types of venture capital backed pipe dreams is,
that they give sane decentralisation ideas, like IPFS, a bad name :(

~~~
user101010
I disagree, but whatever.

If anything, this got me extremely interested in what these kinds of
decentralized systems can be put to use for. Now I get to look up IPFS, so
thank you. :)

------
CM30
Isn't this just a little complicated for a YouTube alternative? I mean, maybe
I'm being a bit silly here, but don't most people like YouTube and other
services cause they're super simple to use? One domain, various videos on said
domain, link to a video never changes.

This on the other hand... it feels like it was made for a tech audience
instead of a mainstream one. You've got the decentralised aspect with its own
protocol and app. You've got a weird payment system where someone can outbid
the original creator to take over a URL for some reason or another. And you've
then got the awkward content filtering/censoring side that somehow still
exists in a supposedly decentralised service.

This seems like something that's gonna be pretty hard to explain to the
average Joe who's merely looking for cat videos and doesn't know what a credit
or protocol or client or anything else means.

I also have to wonder who the 'main' target audience is here. People that like
decentralised services don't want a system where things like DMCA notices
actually work. I mean, can you imagine if torrents could somehow be synced to
remove all copyrighted content on request? No one would use them. And the idea
of other laws (those related to 'hate speech' for example) being something you
can implement on a decentralised service doesn't appeal either.

Meanwhile, you've then got the aforementioned confused average Joes, for whom
a simple server/client system is about as complex a deal as they can be
bothered with, and both groups wondering why an auction system exists for
video URLs.

Feels like an overengineered, not quite intuitive solution to a problem.

------
nercht12
This screams Bitcoin BitTorrent until you get to the end of the article. First
thoughts would be all the lawsuits that would compound. We already have lazy
people ripping and reposting Youtube videos in order to gain subscribers and
make a quick buck. Imagine how much these rippers would love it if they could
charge full price?

> "On the whole, as with the car and encryption, the benefits of LBRY clearly
> outweigh nefarious uses."

This seems to underestimate the persistence of human malice. But LBRY promises
to stop that e.g. via universal black lists and other records. I don't quite
see how the "decentralization" label still applies with a universal black list
and banning policies. That aside, getting the general populace on-board
distributed systems has always been slow-going. Just ask anyone in GNUSocial.
The fact is, most people aren't interested. Youtube is easy already. Easy has
won out.

------
p4bl0
I wouldn't call this a YouTube alternative. Like it or not a YouTube
alternative would have to be able to pay the content creator while delivering
their content to users for free. It's quite sad but for now we do not have
other models than advertisement for that.

Otherwise, technologically, LBRY is interesting, it makes me think of IPFS and
ZeroNet (which could have both been used as backend maybe?).

~~~
pmontra
Yeah, this has nothing to do with YouTube. This is about art distribution with
a digital currency. Very little of YouTube is about art and there is no
currency involved. Not every content creator on YouTube want to be paid by
viewers. For sure I don't, that would against the goal of my videos (very
short vacation clips for friends or tutorials to bring people to my local go
club). The title is misleading.

------
csbubbles
I've tried to read the article, but it was crazy difficult to me,
incomprehensible. I could be just stupid, of course, or lazy. But 4,000 words
to explain the idea doesn't seem right to me, really.

So I went to the main page and tried to watch the video (it's just about 2
minutes, I think). The things did not get better.

I am a fairly technical person but I am always trying to look at any idea from
the consumer perspective. So here we go...

1\. I generate content, say, videos. I upload them on YouTube and I know how
it might potentially get monetized. I mean that for X views and Y ads I may
get Z dollars. All these Bitcoin/Blockchain kind of ideas always explain some
kind of technology improvements but they never touch how the end user would
actually benefit from it. Saying "everything will be better", "you will get
fair profit", "no piracy anymore", and stuff like that is close to saying
nothing. No one usually tells "why", "how" and "what" I would need to do as a
user.

2\. There is YouTube. There is Vimeo. There is Facebook which is constantly
trying to make video integration more efficient. Instagram. Twitter. Etc. So,
if the idea is to build another YouTube with some different technology behind
the scene, then my question is - who would follow? I won't. Seriously. Because
YouTube works, and there are millions of people there. If you build a network
with different content, different functionality, different user experience, I
may consider switching or using it at the same time with YouTube (YouTube also
sucks a lot). But I will never care, as a user, whether it's built on MySQL,
Big Table or Blockchain. That's not my business at all.

So, the technology might be great (I am not to judge), but the application of
it looks still blurry to me. People just don't seem to come up with any good
idea how to apply Blockchain, and they are trying to take any random industry
and build a solution which "should work better" than existing ones. But from
the user point of view, it doesn't matter.

~~~
user101010
I think one of the key parts to this working in the long-run is the client
that has to come with this. Like you said, YouTube already exists. It's easy.
Also, I don't think most users will happily search for something by starting
their search with "lbry://..." They mention the development of an app that
solves all of these problems by simply giving users a simple interface like
they're familiar with. I don't know how they'll deliver on that.

Your other comments are also valid. Especially the one on content creators
moving to this. I think the only advantage to this as compared to other
companies that have tried in the past is the underlying technology. If
creators don't have to deal with a centralized organization that gives them
plenty of headaches, that sounds like a win.

------
thecourier
Look, these guys said Blockchain and Streaming, then the clouds open up in the
sky, angel investors came and spend USD500k just in case

------
IANAD
"Additionally, bids can also be retracted at any time, even if you’re the
current winning bidder. To prevent a name from rapidly switching between
multiple resolutions, the parties that have existing control of a name have a
reasonable period of time to respond to counter bids before a name’s
resolution switches."

"Since LBRY names are the equivalent to content storefronts, we believe that
LBRY names will hold the most value to rightsholders who produce content
associated with a given name."

"As names in demand on LBRY will be more expensive, the names themselves will
also serve as a signal of reputation, legitimacy, and quality. If a user
searches LBRY for Spider Man and sees one at lbry://spiderman and one at
lbry://spiderman_russhaxor, there will be little doubt that the latter is less
legitimate."

Yes, this sounds somewhat like DNS. First come, first serve, try to snatch up
domains first and then sit on them and try to sell them.

But, that places way too much assumed value in the name. All is takes is a
search service to resolve "lbry://asdfaljsfd" to a good copy of Spider Man,
and now it no longer matters what LBRY URL looks legit.

------
lumberjack
The whole premises of this whole technology is this:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50tyub/were_the_nerds...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50tyub/were_the_nerds_behind_lbry_a_decentralized/d76xm3j)

In particular this bit:

>Our goal is to create a system where the URL a user guesses is the most
likely to return what they are actually looking for. Economics says this
design is the most likely to do so, because the URL is most valuable when it
returns what users want.

I very much doubt that orthodox economics actually supports their claim. At
the very least it's probably not as simple as they make it out to be.

This has always been a problem I had with crypto technologies. Those who get
involved seem to have an attraction towards very simplistic economic notions
and an aversion to more refined theory, that is much more able to deal with
reality as opposed to that simple sandbox economic world their mindset seems
to permanently inhibit.

~~~
teraflop
Yep. Their assumption is that whatever content users "want to see" will be
most valuable to those users, and will therefore generate the most revenue,
and will therefore be able to outbid other competitors.

Problem #1: people aren't in general rational, and willingness to pay isn't
always correlated with value derived. How many people benefit from Wikipedia,
compared with the number who donate money?

Problem #2 (more severe IMO): if I understand correctly (the white paper is
very hazy on details), the bidding process is based on capital, not income.
Anyone with sufficient reserves of LBC can squat on a name and extract value
from it with zero recurring cost.

------
snvzz
By trying to fit in mandatory payments, they screwed up.

They should have focused on doing everything else well, and perhaps introduce
voluntary payments (i.e.: donations) later.

Mandatory payments ain't gonna fly; Even assuming they somehow made the
technical part work, which I don't see happening, a system that's the same but
without the payments is bound to exist. Guess which one people are going to
use? If payment is strictly voluntary, however, then a single system is
enough.

------
contravariant
>Blacklists. LBRY will publish and maintain a blacklist of infringing names.
All clients we release and all legal clients will have to follow our
blacklist, or one like it, or face substantial penalties. Especially because…

Doesn't that kind of defeat the whole point of decentralizing it to begin
with?

------
davidgerard
A DNS system as a penny auction scam!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_fee_auction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_fee_auction)

The Reddit AMA is a hoot.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50tyub/were_the_nerds...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50tyub/were_the_nerds_behind_lbry_a_decentralized/)

