Surely someone by now has created a distributed video streaming system coupled with search? Maybe based on bittorrent or something? It seems like an obvious solution to this issue. It wouldn't be fast, and videos might not be as "permanent" (depending on number of "seeders").
The problem seems to be centralization of content and distribution; this seems to be the problem ultimately with many services and "platforms" on the internet. Decentralize it all, make it so that your browser is also a "server" or something of that nature, let the users become "peers".
Yes - I am aware of the various projects out there working on this, but all of them seem to be doing their own thing, with no standards or interoperability - maybe that's a good thing? It is fragmentary - but again, maybe that's better for the ecosystem as a whole?
The only downside is ultimately the ISP level; they already have TOS terms that they can arbitrarily enforce to prevent using "servers"; they currently don't because of so many things out there that need to operate like this, but they technically could, blocking all kinds of stuff, including a distributed "web" (or whatever you want to call it).
So many of these problems can be traced back to when all you had was a form of dialup modem system, and we were conditioned to think that we weren't "peers" on the internet, because the speeds were so slow. We were conditioned to think that our ISP was the endpoint, and we were just paying them to get some of their stuff - and in turn, we turned them into the "gatekeepers". Today, we have always-on connections that would rival or surpass what were actual peerage speeds back then - yet we still have the same broken model that (technically) prevents us from being free to set up our own servers and anything else we want (unless we pay a lot more money for so-called "business class" service - which some providers won't allow you to purchase if the end point is at a "residential address").
This all needs to change - but we might be way, way too late.
The problem seems to be centralization of content and distribution; this seems to be the problem ultimately with many services and "platforms" on the internet. Decentralize it all, make it so that your browser is also a "server" or something of that nature, let the users become "peers".
Yes - I am aware of the various projects out there working on this, but all of them seem to be doing their own thing, with no standards or interoperability - maybe that's a good thing? It is fragmentary - but again, maybe that's better for the ecosystem as a whole?
The only downside is ultimately the ISP level; they already have TOS terms that they can arbitrarily enforce to prevent using "servers"; they currently don't because of so many things out there that need to operate like this, but they technically could, blocking all kinds of stuff, including a distributed "web" (or whatever you want to call it).
So many of these problems can be traced back to when all you had was a form of dialup modem system, and we were conditioned to think that we weren't "peers" on the internet, because the speeds were so slow. We were conditioned to think that our ISP was the endpoint, and we were just paying them to get some of their stuff - and in turn, we turned them into the "gatekeepers". Today, we have always-on connections that would rival or surpass what were actual peerage speeds back then - yet we still have the same broken model that (technically) prevents us from being free to set up our own servers and anything else we want (unless we pay a lot more money for so-called "business class" service - which some providers won't allow you to purchase if the end point is at a "residential address").
This all needs to change - but we might be way, way too late.