youtube

My ISP is Telstra, cable. It's pretty darn good for most everything. Except youtube. The performance of youtube streaming video is really really shit.

There are people complaining about youtube on telstra in Wellington here and here and here and here and here and here and ......

Earlier this year youtube added a neat section where you can see the data speeds from your ISP, compared to others in your city, your country and the world: http://www.youtube.com/my_speed

It shows my ISP, telstra, sitting at between 30% and 70% of the average wellington speed. in other words, telstra with their superior cable network technology is being beaten by people with DSL, and being beaten a LONG way..but only for youtube. Telstra have done something to make youtube perform like shit for their customers.

A draft of the ACTA treaty has been leaked just as government representatives of the world begin secret negotiations in Korea today. This treaty originates in the USA, and is being negotiated with many countries including New Zealand.

Boingboing have some analysis of the leaked draft::

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

Google decided they couldn't pay the royalties that some record labels demand for youtube content, so google choose to not host those label's content.

Then someone set up http://www.fairplayforcreators.com/

Which, as far as i can tell is some kind of demand that google both host their content, and pay their royalities, no matter how high the royalties are.

Fair Play for Creators was established after Internet-giant, Google, made the decision to remove some music content from YouTube. Google's decision was made because it didn't want to pay the going rate for music, to the creators of that music, when it's used on YouTube.

The owners of fairplayforcreators are MCPS-PRS Alliance, a UK collecting society.

It uses emotive language and red herring statements like this

Music creators rely on receiving royalties whenever and wherever their work is used. Royalties are vital in nurturing creative music talent. They make sure music creators are rewarded for their creativity in the same way any other person would be in their work.

This is all true. -- but placing this statement where they did implies that Google wanted to host the content without paying any royalties at all. This is blantantly untrue, and a quick read of the "supporters comments" section shows most of the supporters have been mislead into thinking google were intending to host the contennt without paying.

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THE REVOLUTION IS HERE!

YouTube Cuts Off Video Essayist Following Copyright ComplaintsSource: www.michaelgeist.caYouTube has cut off Keven B. Lee, a video essayist, following the receipt of three copyright warnings. While many of the video essays included scenes from the original movies, hundreds of hours of work went into the creation of the essays which include considerable original work. As Matt Zoller Se...