Can you tell me more about reencoding to save space?

Looks like a bug to me.

I’ve always read it that action must be taken, above and beyond speech.

Legally, a Conspiracy exists when 2 or more persons join together and form an agreement to violate the law, and then act on that agreement.

I could argue that these users collaborated to break the law and did so, but I don’t see that being argued. Fuck I know, INAL.

Why is Google problematic? I store my media locally, and back up locally, but it’s on Google Drive for offsite backup.

You got my gears turning. LOL, for good or for evil.

What if we had a paid service that worked like torrenting? DEEP discount, but you opt to share upload costs? (Best for last, bear with me.)

Company like Spotify coordinates it all, takes their skim off the top for running the servers, devs, payroll, workman’s comp, unemployment insurance, managers, janitors, tech support, typical business stuff. Might not be $BIG% profitable, but 0.001% is hella money in this game.

We could even have upload tiers. How much you want to upload back? More = cheaper. Unlimited download no matter the tier, but you gotta “pay back” the system to for low rates. Wanna mooch? No problem! Top tier pricing for you! Go over? No problem! We got a grace period. Hell, we’ll let your MB’s roll over if you don’t use 'em! Keep pushing your down vs. up, and sorry, we gotta tack a bit on next month. Would you like to go up a tier and maybe save?

And we only try to sell that offer to people our algorithm shows it will truly help. Had a vendor do that to me last week! “Don’t take the standard offer. You’re already doing $X, so $Y costs nothing more in your case.” Wish I could remember the deal, but it was great to have a rep shoot me straight!

We’d almost have to start with an existing company. They got the infrastructure, contracts, and such, but they also got stubborn inertia. Some billionaire needs to get me onboard with this!

Any yes y’all, I understand the DevOps, Dev, infrastructure, payroll, management, etc., spend would be astronomical from scratch. Hell, ever considered the company needs a UI expert for $150/yr. at a minimum? Double that with taxes and benefits. And throw in the AWS bill. shudder

It would be a massive clusterfuck to get going. But what if we could get “Spotify” for $1-$10/mo. depending on your contribution?

Best: What if it was a federated/socialist sort of thing? I like country and rap (seriously), so I opt into servers that mainly have that content. Saves me and my fellow fans upload, because we’re uploading to each other and not costing the service anything but a few pennies to the artist!

I know this has 12 holes in it, but am I straight nuts?

I’m saving this comment.

^ This is exactly what I meant.

And they are free to do so! Why do I want small-time, bitchy customers who won’t, or can’t, pay? Let someone else coming up in the world take them on. I did my time, they can do theirs.

Pick one:

• A restaurant that charges $10 per burger, at a cost of $3 per burger.

• A restaurant that charges $5 per burger, at a cost of $3 per burger.

Capitalism is common sense!

CAVEAT: When decoupled from a sense of the greater good. Which is sometimes called morality.

You’re both right.

Meh, might not hurt them, obviously their suits don’t think so.

What they’re trying to do is convert or lose low-value customers and make high-value customers and save bandwidth at the same time. Fewer high-value customers also has an impact on support costs.

I did the same with my little computer support business. Doubled prices and kept the solid customers.

I straight steal my media, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. Actually, I’m a little stunned that anyone pays for this bullshit in the first place.

I’m using TubeBlock on Windows (Edge). Hasn’t hit me yet?

I honestly can’t understand people bitching about getting screwed by subscriptions, or the number of them they have.

I got Amazon Prime because I started buying most of my shit that way during the pandemic. (Guess who’s never caught COVID!) But all I care about is the discounted shipping. I still steal their videos and put them on my NAS.