

Justin.tv ending archiving, deleting all archived videos after June 14 - makomk
https://help.justin.tv/entries/41803380-Changes-to-Video-Archive-System

======
Asparagirl
If the destruction of all this unique user-generated content pisses you off --
and it should -- then feel free to join ArchiveTeam and help save this (and
other) content for the Internet Archive. Check out the ArchiveTeam wiki at
archiveteam.org, or come on over to #archiveteam and #archiveteam-bs on efnet
throughout this week to watch a self-organizing data rescue mission happen in
real time. (There will probably be a new dedicated channel spun off for this
project later today or tomorrow.)

In the meantime, programs like youtube-dl and livestreamer are your friends.

[http://rg3.github.io/youtube-
dl/documentation.html](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/documentation.html)
[http://livestreamer.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://livestreamer.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

~~~
IvyMike
To elaborate, the ArchiveTeam distributes a very simple-to-use virtual machine
image that you can run. When you do so, your machine will help download and
collect from disappearing websites. I don't think they've got scripts for
justin.tv yet, but it sounds like they are going to, so now would be a good
time to get your VM ready.

It's easy, and the more people who run the machine, the more power the
ArchiveTeam has at their disposal. I encourage everyone to give it a look.

You can get the virtual machine here:
[http://tracker.archiveteam.org/](http://tracker.archiveteam.org/)

~~~
ddorian43
it has stopped working for me, what about you, it still works ?

~~~
IvyMike
Everything seems ok for me. What is going wrong?

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deftnerd
I'm not a Justin.tv user, but it frustrates me when organizations make big
decisions like this without much time for their users to react. I can only
assume that they're bleeding money and they're trying to quickly cut their
operating costs.

Someone should contact the Archive.org and see if they can get copies of all
the public archives of these videos.

~~~
taurath
Justin.tv owns Twitch, which is recently rumored to be in acquisition talks
with Youtube for $1bil. I don't think they're bleeding money at this point.

~~~
kevinflo
Bleeding money and being in acquisition talks are not mutually exclusive.

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ajb
Maybe not, but it's bad strategy to give away that you're bleeding money while
in acquisition talks.

~~~
huxley
As long as you don't end up like HP and Autonomy:

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/may/07/shareholders...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/may/07/shareholders-
sue-hp-autonomy-deal)

~~~
ajb
Oops. Yes, you're right - you almost certainly have to disclose it at some
point. Don't take legal advice from me...

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chroma
A few Defcons ago, Jason Scott gave an excellent talk about this failure
mode[1]. Basically, companies host user-generated content for free. Then years
later, they destroy it with little or even no notice. Sturgeon's law applies;
most of the deleted content is crap. But a lot of it matters to the people who
made it. More importantly, a small fraction of it is stuff that future
historians would _kill_ for. Collectively, companies that engage in this
behavior are burning historical evidence.

1\. Archive Team: A Distributed Preservation of Service Attack
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ZTmuX3cog)

~~~
maxerickson
I find it hard to get too wound up about an only copy that has been turned
over to a third party. I get that the user understanding the situation well
can be a problem, but it isn't a very careful thing to do.

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dylanrw
I like how they phrase this like it's a considerate product decision, while
it's essentially them not wanting to shoulder the expense of storage. Without
knowing more about their product internals an immediately obvious and
important feature getting the axe from this is highlights. Example: I will
stream and then go back the next day and cut the video down and take the
snippets and post them to youtube. These highlights then lead to interest in
the channel which leads to more viewers. Now I need to archive all my stuff
locally, and upload it over my mediocre connection. If they limited the
archival time window to 4 hours after the end of the broadcast they would have
their drastic reduction in infrastructure cost while not totally removing a
valid and arguably important feature.

~~~
kevingadd
I think that's how Twitch works by default now. They archive the whole stream
for like a week so you can Highlight it, and then it's auto-deleted (unless
you've configured it to keep everything).

~~~
kevinwang
I believe the default now is that nothing is saved, not even for a week.
However, each user can configure a setting that does cause Twitch to save the
stream for about a week, before it's deleted.

In order to fully archive a stream "permanently", a user needs to view each
archived recording individually and select an option from that page to save it
forever.

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Aqueous
Perhaps they should just keep the archive videos for a week or a couple of
days after the broadcast. That gives a window for users to download archived
copies and reduces the amount of storage they need on their end. It also means
that users aren't forced to generate video archives themselves, and can still
rely on the service for this function. Maybe for videos that accrue a certain
amount of unique views during the grace period, keep them around in a sort of
"Classics" library?

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kcbanner
Twitch.tv uses a similar system

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maccard
Twitch is owned by Justin.tv

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ggreenbe
technically it's Twitch Interactive which kind of shows you the company's
focus and growth.

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aleem
This is reminiscent of Google's (and others, to be fair) build-first,
monetise-later approach to products. Features get cut, entire products get
slashed and users end up losing their data and time invested.

At least Google had acted partly responsibly by providing ample notice and
allowing users to download their data before shutting down Google Reader.

In the case of Justin.tv, I would propose they at least take a measured
approach and start by deleting videos that haven't received a single view in
over a 6 months then work their way from there.

~~~
rhizome
In 2007, this was _THE FUTURE_ , where UGC was going to be the democratizing
content tide that would lift all of our boats. Turns out it all devolved into
ad platforms anyway, just like 1997.

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ghaff
On the one hand, I have a fair bit of sympathy for the preservationist school
of though--and the Internet Archive does great work. I also consider it very
fortunate that much (though not all) of Usenet was preserved when it may well
not have been.

OTOH:

>We found that more than half of our VODs are unwatched (with 0 or 1 total
views), while the vast majority are rarely watched (with 10 or less views).

The reality is that there is an increasingly indescribably volume of user-
created "stuff" out there and it's pretty impractical to preserve all of it.
And when it's not on a well-known site that's shutting down (think Geocities)
it mostly sinks beneath the waves without anyone really noticing. I could
probably name any number of online magazines/sites which went away or
restructured and whose content is no longer available. I'm not saying that's a
good thing but it's hard for me to get too worked up in most of these cases.

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bruceb
So only 1 week notice? Bit harsh. Seems 30 days would be more standard when
shutting a service or feature.

~~~
pgrote
It could be a cost elimination.

~~~
acdha
Likely - also, if true, basically the equivalent of putting a banner on their
site saying “We don't value our users!”. Even a minimally competent management
team should be able to look at the burn rate and make decisions more than a
few days out.

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im3w1l
>We found that more than half of our VODs are unwatched (with 0 or 1 total
views), while the vast majority are rarely watched (with 10 or less views).

Isn't this the standard for content? Anyone know similar statistics for image
hoster, url minifiers, youtube, appstore etc?

~~~
sp332
It seems like they asked the wrong question. It's not about how many people
want to watch archived video, it's about how many people want to make an
archive of a video. That said, I wonder if the amount of money they save is
enough to offset the users they lose to other services.

~~~
jonny_eh
I think the question they asked was "how much does it cost to host all this
video?"

Then for their post, they answered the question they wished they were asked,
like a politician does in an interview.

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protomyth
A little over a week doesn't seem like enough time for the news to get out and
people to download all their content.

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swang
Of course this is financial.

Justin.tv is not a profit center for Twitch Interactive, so they need to cut
costs. If 50% of VODs are viewed <= 1 time, and most viewed <=10 times, why
not just leave them there? Obviously storing them costs money, but there
probably isn't a lot of bandwidth costs associated with it.

I don't have anything against what they're doing as much as the sugarcoating
of "focusing on live video"

This also lends more credence that they're getting bought out soon and want to
look good on the cost sheets.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
_and want to look good on cost sheets_

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!

Seriously, there can be no explanation for the ridiculously short notice other
than YouTube said, "You look good, but your costs are just too high." (Or, if
not YouTube, somebody else Twitch is trying to get into a bidding war with
YouTube.)

Any other reason and management would have looked at the costs and said, "We
need to transition out to save money," and provided a reasonable runway for
their customers. As it is, this has _nothing_ to do with making things better
for their customers.

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Yver
The page currently says _" All VODs will be removed after June 8, 2014. We
recommend downloading your recorded videos before the date."_

~~~
makomk
Yeah, I'm not sure why the title got changed to say June 14th.

~~~
Yver
Oh, that's even weirder. I thought the page changed after you posted the link,
not the other way around.

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blat001
I wonder if it is relate to copyright issues associated with the sale of
twitch.tv

As in Google saying they can't deal with these videos without proper
acceptance of their terms of service.

The timing seems to indicate they are trying to offload the content ASAP.

From a cost perspective, they are already paying for it and 1 week vs 1 month
would not make that much of a difference if it was a "product feature"

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jacquesm
If they're cutting things this fine I fear for the future of justin.tv, this
does not sound like a well thought out corporate move, it sounds like panic.
Imagine coming back from your holiday in two weeks time and finding all your
stuff wiped out. Ridiculous.

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dtech
I know Justin.tv and Twitch.tv are related, does anyone know if this policy
will also reflect twitch?

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abstractbill
The policy will only affect Justin.tv, not Twitch.

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Siecje
They should only keep content for a week if there is no views.

Having an additional recording is convent, now people have to record locally
at the same time as streaming.

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brianbreslin
Its interesting if you read their FAQ, they are eliminating their premium
service which in theory should have included archiving. My first thought was
why not charge people for permanent archiving? Guess not enough people are
paying to even justify the consumer premium model.

I feel like justin.tv's peak was 5+ years ago, twitch seems to have been their
real business in the last 3 years.

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AliAdams
I don't see why the decision is so digital. Surely a 1 week hold coupled with
the ability to move the video to YouTube (or simply the latter as an option at
the end of a live stream) would take away the huge hosting costs but give
content creators the chance to save certain videos if they wanted to.

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dredmorbius
Two week notice for storage policy changes smells like financial concerns to
me.

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serf
well, to be fair, nearly any storage policy change will smell that way.

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dredmorbius
It's one thing to say "we're phasing this out over 12 months" (or even, say,
six).

Two weeks is freaking desperation.

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Paul12345534
Agreed, 3-6 months notice is fine. This is not a classy way for them to
address the issue.

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pavel_lishin
I wonder what it would take to transload them all to youtube.

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ja2ke
Twitch.tv has offered this service for ages, but maybe it started offering it
after splitting from the Justin codebase?

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Paul12345534
I understand people need to make business decisions but short notice on
something like this isn't exactly a classy move.

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instakill
That really isn't a lot of notice.

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dobbsbob
i only use JTV to nerd out in the trek streaming channels and make fun of
rikers lack of beard in chat during season 1 TNG

