
How Blockchain Could Kill Both Cable and Netflix - mcknz
https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/28/how-blockchain-could-kill-both-cable-and-netflix/
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mcphage
This is one of the dumbest articles I've read in a long time.

> Content creators could create shows and make them available over a
> decentralized platform instantly – no need to go pitch a studio or try to
> get Netflix to put you on their system. No more gatekeepers that have to
> approve your content.

When you go to a network, or Amazon, or Netflix, part of what you get is
distribution. But that's not what you go to them for. You go to them for
_MONEY_ , since producing high-end media content is _expensive_. And in
exchange for their money, you agree to only distribute that content on their
network.

But without the money to produce the content, the rest is meaningless.

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autokad
in 2007ish, there was lots of new content creators coming on the scene, but
often producing 8 minute episodes.

I found them quiet enjoyable, like 'the guild', but a lot of people struggle
with the idea of watching something so short. I had to twist arms to get
people to watch it. once they did, they enjoyed it a lot, but were still
unwilling to watch content of that length. unfortunately, I think short works
much better for independent content producers.

~~~
mcphage
> unfortunately, I think short works much better for independent content
> producers

I agree, that size video is great for independent producers. But there will
always be demand for large spectacle productions, and for the foreseeable
future, those will cost large amounts of money. Simpler distribution
won't—can't—help with that.

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donarb
There's no how there. Just a bunch of hand-wavy stuff. They talk about the
freedom of content providers to go around Netflix and Amazon, but in a lot of
cases those companies provide money to content creators to produce the shows,
not just distribution to customers. They make it sound as though you can crowd
source production costs after the fact using tokens. Good luck with that.

Reminds me of the old Slashdot meme: 1) Blockchain 2) ??? 3) Profit!

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slowmovintarget
You've revealed the Blockchain gnomes' secret business plan!

I'm guessing Netflix will be fine, especially if the rumors of them being
bought out by Apple are true.

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kneel
How clickbait could kill both discourse and logic.

It seems like people randomly generate an article title from buzzword soup,
write it up and call it a day.

What a time to be alive.

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thriftwy
Did they just invent BitTorrent?

It doesn't have blockchain to be precise, which won't hurt IMO because
discovery becomes more problematic with time. But the rest of stuff is here.

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autokad
i guess other peer to peer networks, you can always bring a person to court
over sharing something. Whereas blockchain it can be more anonymous and
content can be split on many machines?

Let me know if i am thinking of this right. i think we all could use a little
more clarification on how this changes things over existing techs

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thriftwy
Whereas with blockchain you can bring everybody to court because they all
share the same infringing material.

There was a long discusion about what happens when blockchain contains some
piece of information That Is Forbidden To Possess. You could probably claim
you didn't have the intent. But with Pirate Blockchain you sure do.

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krautsourced
How does content distribution in any way relate to blockchains? If there's a
point here, I seem to be missing it entirely.

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t0mbstone
It's literally just peer to peer networking and computation, but paying people
to participate by programmatically doling out crypto currency to people who
are contributing.

This isn't bittorrent. It's not blockchain. It's kind of a weird hybrid of the
two.

It's actually a really brilliant idea, if they pull it off correctly.

The article is completely written like shit, though.

Check out:

[https://livepeer.org/](https://livepeer.org/)

[https://viuly.com/](https://viuly.com/)

~~~
dogma1138
Someone needs to product the content it doesn’t materializes out of the ether.

The distribution itself is not a problem the blockchain can solve or should
solve it just adds an unnecessary cost on top of other method of distribution.

~~~
t0mbstone
You're right. It would probably make more sense to just have a peer to peer
storage and computation network with a bidder/buyer market (which could accept
everything from USD to any random crypto-currency). There's no good reason to
have the system built on a blockchain.

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FrozenTuna
Why would I run a node on something like this? What's the incentive?

It breaks down 4 benefits:

Free up content creators. Sure, or they could, you know, throw it up on
youtube, twitch, vimeo, or any other centralized app.

New channels. This is just shit writing. This is 90% the same thing as bullet
1.

Advertising and Free Content. Again, see all the other centralized apps. Also,
there would 100% need to be a middle man. Thats what a decentralized block
chain is. Hosting a blockchain has costs. Especially something as space
consuming as video hosting.

Paid Content. Still a problem already solved by not being on a decentralized
application. I can't wrap my head around why someone wouldn't just host their
own content if they have anywhere near enough money to produce content good
enough to charge for.

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TYPE_FASTER
Napster, plus a way to monetize the content? That's how I read the beginner
doc on the LivePeer site this article links to.

"Livepeer’s peer-to-peer network lets you stream what you want, when you want,
without a single point of failure or censorship."

Yeah, that's just plain ol' P2P. Blockchain is distributing a public list of
transactions via P2P. Livepeer is using a blockchain to record streaming
transactions, and pay the node responsible for streaming.

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itaris
I fail to see what advantage this holds over YouTube.

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fuddcoinn
I'm of the opinion that as long as youtube doesn't make profit then anything
is possible.

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fabiofzero
I took time to write a well-researched response to this.
[https://medium.com/@fzero/blockchain-
blockchain-6c5d60923050](https://medium.com/@fzero/blockchain-
blockchain-6c5d60923050)

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__m
How to make coffee with blockchain

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knodi
-_- what a silly article.

