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I have zero faith in P2P video distribution until copyright liability for watching those videos is shifted off of individuals.

Right now, using something like PeerTube is taking your life into your hands. Look at all of the copyright nonsense that hits otherwise legitimate YouTube channels, and now imagine that they get to sue everyone who watched the video, too.

Centralized services can rely on DMCA 512 for liability limitation; and individual viewers almost certainly do not have copyright liability for merely watching a video on a central service. At the very least, you'd have to subpoena the service to get an IP address, and then subpoena the ISP to get at DHCP logs, and then argue to a court that a user that the temporary copies involved with merely watching a video had infringed your copyright.

When you join a swarm that shares a file, you just broadcast that IP address directly to the person who's going to sue you. That's how these networks work. There's a cottage industry of firms that deliberately "leak" their content to BitTorrent and then sue whoever downloads it; that also applies with PeerTube, IPFS, etc. You don't get DMCA 512 liability limitation because it's your own copyright liability. Furthermore it's easier to argue that someone in a P2P swarm has infringed copyright as there's uploading - further copying - involved. So both practically and theoretically speaking it's far easier to get sued in a P2P system.

Also, P2P video is terrible for mobile use-cases. Mobile devices are leeches in a P2P system - they don't have access to unlimited power like a desktop does. So you either flatten the batteries of everyone on phones, or you detect the use of a battery and lose the benefit of the swarm.




Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are many possible configurations & usages for P2P. Data stored on a DHT is one important tech for having people own their own data.

Also, it's ok to have leaches on a P2P system if you can properly incentivize & pay the hosts. Ethereum, FileCoin, IPFS, Holochain a market for hosting data. Ethereum & Holochain will provide a market for hosting apps.




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