[Commons-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[geni]

On 7/20/07, 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.

And seamonkey?

> The Internet Archive currently does not transcode to Ogg Theora, but
> has a transcoding pipeline in place for other codecs. They have
> recently started embedding the Flash-based open source "Flow Player"
> for playing back FLV files directly in the browser, and have added FLV
> to their transcoding pipeline.

Significant differences between open source and free.


> 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.

You mean all the problems with using third partly licenses haven't
convinced you that getting involved with people with different aims to
us is a really bad idea?

> Imagine that we could easily embed any currently hosted video from the
> Internet Archive into Wikimedia projects, but also make use of their
> immense hosting capacity for future video uploads beyond the current
> 20 MB upload size limit.

Immense hosting capacity? What about bandwidth?

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=archive.org&url=archive.org/

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

We are not interested in competing with youtube.

> 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. I therefore propose that
> 1) we immediately begin serious discussions with the Internet Archive
> about hosting some or all of our video content on their servers;

The stuff is under free licences they can host whatever they want. Not
our problem unless they break the terms of the licences.


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

Write a patent free codec for flash and we can look into it.

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

As and when they come up with something free of patents.


> 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) 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.

Um the people violateing the patents would be the wikimedia foundation.


> 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.

I've seen that argument before. Generaly used by those in favor of
adding copyvios to en.

-- 
geni