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Comment by stegosaurus | Hacker News Reader

This looks like a way to break BitTorrent, as other posters have outlined.

Streaming in general (apart from via a local server) frustrates me. The entire idea is simply a way of relinquishing control to an external body. Hard drives are not that expensive, and patience is a virtue. I'm very happy that youtube-dl exists, for example, because otherwise when Google disappears I'll lose a lot of useful material I have access to at the moment.

Regardless - I'm surprised to see this here. Sci-Hub is one thing - it's an educational resource.

Mainstream media... I just gave it up rather than pirating it. I'm not 18 any more - my friends don't really care about the latest Marvel flick. The movie companies have lost even my mindshare now. Books, online reading material, educational videos, all free, all a better use of my time, all less likely to leave me wanting a fast car like James Bond.

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> Streaming in general (apart from via a local server) frustrates me. The entire idea is simply a way of relinquishing control to an external body.

Not said enough; thank you.

There was outrage (rightfully so) over DRM on videos and music, because it handcuffed the user, and it prevented legitimate and legal activities like moving music to a new device.

The streaming situation is far more restrictive, but nobody seems to mind---not only do you have digital handcuffs on the stream itself, you have ephemeral media. And most people don't consider it as a problem, because the issues they traditionally had with DRM---such as copying to another device---no longer manifest; it's available _everywhere_. But when you stop paying for your account, or when the service disappears, you no longer have access to your media; you never did to begin with.

This comment is irrelevant to the topic at hand. Not only is this app (or any other torrent streaming app, including uTorrent and qBittorrent and PopcornTime) not have any DRM, you can use the fully downloaded file after you stream it. [1]

For non-torrent sources, streaming is not tied to DRM either. Most youtube videos are not flash based, but streamed MP4 files that aren't DRM'd in any way; you can get the MP4 file if you want. Service disruption is a problem, but there is always a trade off- and honestly, I'm more likely to lose a hard drive full of video files than Youtube is likely to disappear in the next 10 years.

[1] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5Q24UE0ptGU/TZiOmTxoHJI/AAAAAAAAAI... Here's a qBittorrent image for an example.

You (and I) are certainly more likely to lose a hard drive before YouTube disappears, but it's likely that at least a few of the videos I have here have already been taken down.

Not to mention, if my hard drives and backups fail, I have bigger problems than my video hoard!

Additionally, I can bookmark _and_ download; that would take what, 0.5 seconds longer? :)

It's relevant in the sense that I'm stating that streaming makes the users worse off than DRM; the reason for the comparison wasn't clear.

Well, the streaming is combined with DRM that makes obtaining the stream difficult.

Unprotected streams are not an issue.

Streaming doesn't break bittorrent that easily. It's not optimal for the health of a torrent cloud, but practice has shown that it's not a major issue.

Plenty of torrent streaming apps, most notably Popcorn Time (http://popcorntime.sh and source code at https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop) has existed for a long time now.

As self-righteous as it often sounds, this type of fight against consumerism really is admirable. That said, I think in way these types of tools actually help people to move in the direction that you're going (or have gone).

Setting up x y and z streaming servers and downloading 38 movies at a time (because patience is a virtue) so you have a large on-demand catalogue isn't really less consumerist than having tools that are versatile enough to let you sit down and get something on the screen within 30 seconds.

Of course, you can abuse something like this or Popcorn Time to become more of a consumer than ever, but I don't think it's inherent to the tool.

On the topic of the latest Marvel flick, you really should see Deadpool. It's absolutely hysterical!

I wasn't really advocating a huge library either. I think the idea I have is that there's not really a benefit to trying to 'optimize' watching movies.

I guess I see it in the same way as healthy eating, or something. I really bloody like cookies. They're super tasty. If I end up with pack of freshly baked cookies they're gone in a few hours. So why give myself that temptation?

What I actually want is the ability to do it. I think it's good for my mental health to have a treat every now and then, but not have it take over my life. So basically, it should be difficult, but not too difficult.

In a similar vein, downloading a YouTube video before watching it gives me that window of self control before there's more exciting stuff battering me in the face to continue.

I've been using computers and Internet since childhood - I'm not a luddite by any means. But I think it's far too easy nowadays to get caught in bad behaviour patterns because of the instantaneous nature. It takes active effort to digest deep topics.

I don't think I'm a pious enough person to be self righteous! Maybe I'd feel different if I were more financially secure and had more time for pure leisure? I don't know. :)

> because otherwise when Google disappears I'll lose a lot of useful material I have access to at the moment.

Could you explain that ? Why would google disappear ?

Lazy language, perhaps.

Ultimately, I doubt that every piece of media that is currently on YouTube will be available for as long as I need them. That could be a year, or it could be fifty.

For my purposes, if a video gets taken down, it's lost forever, I probably won't be able to find it again.

But 'Guinea Pig Noises Loud Squeaking Sounds.mp4' lives on my hard-drive forever. ;)

I feel the same way about webpages really. wget -> it's mine until my hard-drive and all backups die. bookmark -> it's mine until my hard-drive and all backups die, PLUS the site goes down. Also immutable, which can be a bonus.

But if you didn't contribute to the cost of making those guinea pig noises, however small they may seem, you don't have the right to that access that content infinitely.

If you are interested in my views on copyright infringement, you might find this comment useful (commenting on ad blockers).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11422763

It probably makes sense for me to formulate the argument properly and write it up at some point.

In this particular instance - I'm not sure that the amount paid is relevant - the desires of the publishers would be, which doesn't necessarily include payment (otherwise no-one would publish under GPL). It's potentially a violation of the ToS of YouTube - I wouldn't know, I use a commandline tool which bypasses the web interface entirely.

Sorry Google! I'm sure you'll do OK. (Do you have a donation address? :P)

I'm not sure how your view on ad blocking is entitling you to infinite media consumption of IP you didn't contribute to. Advertisers didn't make these hypothetical guinea pig sounds you like, I'm assuming.

And my views personally represent my own, not an organization, which is why I don't hide behind a dinosaur name :)

Sorry, it's the best I can do for now.

We'll have to agree to disagree. :)

Oh come on now, I was hoping you had actually rationalized something that wasn't self serving.

Maybe you should switch to username non-sequitursaurus :)

Who knows. Their point is that they now have control over the content and aren't subject to the whims of an external body. I have felt the pain of this as about 25% (!) of the videos in my youtube favorites list have been removed either by Google or the original uploader over the years.

When the sun expands into a red giant?

I thought about downloading all the youtube videos that I consider have future watching values but then i realised it would take way too much effort and storage space to download and tag/categorise them and that there is no limit to my hoarding tendency.

It's more videos I've already seen.

I find it absurd that I can have a copy of a video in my brain, but potentially not be able to show it to someone else. It feels like an arbitrary limitation on knowledge transfer. If we had brain-computer interfaces I could just push my (analog fuzzy) version out into the screen again!

Tagging and categorization can be fixed later. I generally find grep -i a good enough solution.

Reconstructing videos from memories has already happened (in a sense): http://mashable.com/2011/09/23/scientists-brain-visual-memor...

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