[Commons-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/19/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Last week I met with John Killy, the COO of the Mozilla Corporation,
> and with Brewster Kahle, ED of the Internet Archive. Mozilla intends
> to support video playback in Firefox using the new <video> tag [1],
> but such support is not likely to arrive before late 2008 according to
> John.

Thats nice that you met with Mozilla, it is a shame you didn't advise
anyone in advance ... I could have given you some good talking points.

> The Archive is happy to support us with video hosting in any way. If
> we can find a useful hosting arrangement with them, they would also be
> willing to add Ogg Theora to their transcoding pipeline.

Just like last time this was brought up I fail to see why we need to
introduce a dependency on an outside organization.

By doing so we lose the ability to offer a complete record of our
content, and and the ability to offer easy 'one stop' duplication of
our collection for backup and other purposes.

Right now Wikimedia's sites standalone. You can reasonably make an
offline copy. That falls apart if we start directly including our
video content from another site.

It's especially problematic when you talk about moving our hosting to
a site which has a copyright policy which is substantially
incompatible with ours.

A lot of the content that Archive.org hosts would be deleted on
commons for copyright reasons. Historically they have handled
copyright by exception rather than proactively.

> Video has tremendous potential educational use, and we should not let
> the Wikimedia projects fall behind when it comes to hosting video
> content.

Yet some members of our development staff do not respond to emails
about video playback support in Mediawiki.

If it is important, why isn't there interest in this outside of the
occasional "we should move video to Archive.org" or "we should have
flash" discussions?

> One should not underestimate the big role that ease of use
> played in the success of YouTube: thanks to embedded Flash video,
> users no longer had to worry about some plugin possibly hosing their
> Windows installation, or about Real Networks' eternal "Buffering ..."
> message showing up. It just worked [tm].

This is not at all unique to flash... of course. :)

> We must achieve the same ease of use in Wikimedia projects. In my
> opinion, inconveniencing users is the worst possible way to raise
> awareness of free content & free software.

We are not "inconveniencing users" to promote free software and formats anymore.

Where have you been?  :) We now have automatic in browser playback
that works for a majority of readers without downloading anything
additional.

It's not perfect, but the compatibility is there.
If I wasn't ignored on this subject it would be further along by now.

> 2) All uploaded videos should be transcoded to at least Ogg Theora & a
> Flash-compatible codec

"Flash-compatible" means patent encumbered and thats not a fact in dispute.

> 3) we add video support to MediaWiki that will, as intelligently as
> possible, fall back to any of the following methods
> - embedded open source Flash player
> - Java player
> - VLC plugin
> - (in the future) <video> support.

Jeez Erik. With the exception of flash we already have that.
*Including* HTML5 <video/> support, which works in Opera.  In addition
to those we also support Application/Ogg which works for most modern
Linux distros out of the box (via totem or mplayer plugin).

Flash isn't included in our current solution because it's not possible
to play back non-patent encumbered audio or video formats in Flash 8.
(Flash 8 uses MP3 for audio, and your choice of two encumbered video
codecs)  In theory support for free formats is possible in Flash 9,
but it hasn't been coded yet and few are running Flash 9.

> 4) We support the open source Flash project Gnash to ensure that it
> can be used for video playback on Wikimedia servers.

Why would we provide support to groups producing players of encumbered
formats (open as they are) when we have not provided a single shred of
direct support to organizations which produce non-encumbered formats
and media tools?

> Having an open source Flash implementation & an open source Flash
> player does not address the patent issues with Flash video, but those
> who are concerned about violating software patents (which are not
> universally applicable anyway)

Indeed, only applicable in the US for the most part.

Wikimedia is in the US. How do you propose we pay the licensing fees
for the codec patents we are using, should we be presented with a
bill?

> could still use the provided Theora
> files. We could also add a clear message to this effect at the bottom
> of every embedded Flash video.

The existence of non-encumbered formats is *pointless* when the
formats are relegated to mere alternatives.

If someone doesn't step forward and push for unencoumbered formats you
never escape the chicken and egg problem with their support. We
stepped forward and suffered for a long time. Now that it pretty much
JustWorks(tm), you want to regress? Feh!

The reality is that the licensors of proprietary codecs are not
stupid, they utilize tactics such as only sending bills to the most
lucrative targets who are already established and committed to their
codecs, and they adjust their rates per work/per download pricing so
that it is just slightly less expensive than the cost of driving a
switch to free formats on your own. There is also data that suggests
that they negotiate anti-competitive deals in which licensees agree to
exclude support for free formats in exchange for improves fees for the
proprietary codecs.

Through these methods they are able to maintain their initial
head-start and continue to change what is effectively a tax on all
profitable media shipped around on the internet.

This tax is a terrible and unreasonable burden on the freedom of
artists, content creators as well as consumers. Especially ones who
aren't interested in charging their users a dollar per work.

Helping to prolong this state of affairs by supporting the formats it
depends on is a direct affront to the Foundation's mission.

People are not free if they must pay a tax in order to distribute
knoweldge to more than a handful of freedom k00ks like myself.  Free
formats solve the problem completely, but only if there is a force
helping to maintain mainstream adoption.

Offering free formats as an alternative might allow us to argue that
the blood is off our hands, ... but it is a failure to do our part,
especially considering how far I'd come.

> Such a solution would be a reasonable compromise between trying to
> provide "free as in speech" video wherever possible, but also
> minimizing hassle and maximizing ease of use for typical Windows users
> looking for free educational content. We should continue to evangelize
> & use Ogg Theora, but not at the expense of usability.

We already have a solution that works for a lot of Windows users
without installing anything most don't already have. (Flash isn't
installed by default in Windows either.. but most have it. Java
penetration isn't quite as deep, but for our readers it does
remarkably well)

I think it's insulting that you're pushing flash yet again without
even bothering to ask how many readers have flash support yet can't
use our existing playback solution, and without being aware of what we
already support.