Well yeah, I do know. Because I went to school and stuff. Your pulled-out-of-your-posterior-to-make-some-sort-of-vague-point sample set is 5. The population of the U. S. is currently hovering around 316,165,718. The distribution you posit would suggest that 80% of the population ranks below earthworms. Any idiot knows a sufficiently large sample set is necessary to derive any meaning from the concept of average. Your suggestion is ridiculous. I wonder which side of the line you fall on? :-)

... 50 % of americans are below average. Oh noes!

No, cynicism is what YOU are experiencing. This seems like a profoundly optimistic act on his part.

... a very smart man.

The elephant in the room: Requiring streaming for every customer simultaneously with no option for offline playback is a broken model with respect to how the internet works.

Granted, since any customer can arbitrarily choose any item in the Netflix library for viewing, the capability for streaming in real-time needs to work decently well. In practice, however, only the things in "My List" are likely to be viewed by a given customer, so downloading to a local cache would allow playback at optimal quality without needing ideal network performance.

It seems to me the intense desire on the part of Netflix and the "rights holders" for full control, maximum monetization and the deep rooted fear that someone might figure out how to make a copy is the real reason this is even a problem.

I would have no problem with a Netflix client that incorporated some sort of DVR-like functionality so that items of interest could be added to a local queue (sorry - queue is a deprecated term - My Local List). That would be wonderful for situations where the available network is sketchy (eg. hotel, coffeeshop) or not present (airplane, campsite, beach, etc). Rampant sharing could be minimized by allowing only one (or a few) devices to have the locally cached content, and requiring a network connection to download or release a particular item. Or if that's too complicated, just allow a limited number of authorized devices per account that can cache the same content.

I think enough customers would take advantage of this to alleviate the problems caused by real-time streaming and take a lot of power away from the intermediaries.

Wrong question. If the bar is set so high that people like Snowden have to prove their intentions unambigously, beyond a reasonable doubt, in order to prove their credibility, then they are lost before they begin, because the system assures that's never possible. But that's not why it's the wrong question. It's wrong because information about the workings of a government should never be secret except in the most exceptional of circumstances. Revealing information that should never be secret in the first place should not pose the risk of "disrupting government" regardless of the intent involved. If "disrupting government" merely means "learning what we are doing so you can debate the issue and vote to stop us", then the problem is more fundamental than you think.

That's some astonishingly bad advice.

*whoosh*. It was a joke.

Noted. No need to shout. Thank you so much for setting me straight. Where can I sign up for your "Overcoming Fear of Clarity: Useful Techniques to Maximize Clarity When Using the English Language in Informal Settings" seminar? It sounds really interesting.

In the context of the post it wasn't an all-inclusive term, but referred to 2 parties in an imaginary conversation, myself and Google. Often a prelude to talking things over and working something out.

Not YouTube's problem, is it? Viewers find videos like they find anything else, by looking for them in the places where the videos are. My grocery store doesn't tell me where I can find related groceries not in the store. I go to several stores in the area and learn what each has that distinguishes them from the other. I go to the store that has the best produce/meat/seafood/organic/whatever when I want that thing. I don't consider Stop-n-Shop evil because I have to shop at other places depending on what I want.

So what do you make money from if I become a Google Fiber customer? That's what I'm concerned about. If it's just the fair-market cost of the service I'm paying for, then that's fine. If your noble stance hides the fact that you attach yourself to the fiber like a tick to suck value by monitoring my use of the service and selling that information to the highest bidder, then we have a problem.

Not quite true. I'd shop at a dozen different mom-and-pop stores if it gave me the opportunity to purchase what I wanted at a price acceptable to me. As a bonus I get to know some new people. Amazon isn't preferable because they same me time and gas money but because they are universally less expensive than mom-and-pop and almost always have what I was looking for. Mom and pop need an Amazon-like entity more than I do, because they can't match what Amazon can do at scale.

I may be somewhat intelligent, but I'm biased so not the best judge. Thanks for noticing though. My family, friends and community members might assert otherwise, but I try my best. My greatest triumph was my teenaged daughter who recently declared that "You're pretty smart, dad". If you have or have had teenaged children, you'll know that such an unsolicited statement is as rare as winning the lottery and shockingly gratifying. And fleeting because you're destined to be a clueless dumbass a few minutes later. :-)

I question your premise that the existence of something that couples users to YouTube equates to a blanket condemnation of the service as evil and exploitative. The above-mentioned daughter has a YouTube account to which she posts videos, so you could declare she was "coupled" to the service, but she's not forced to use it and she can post the same videos anywhere else she wants without worrying about exclusivity restrictions. Anyone at all can view videos posted to YouTube without restriction or being coupled to YouTube. I don't deny that the ease of posting videos and the fact that the potential audience is unlimited and unrestricted might bring back repeat users regardless of the quality of the service (whatever that means), but you haven't made a case for why that is bad. Sounds like a desirable feature to me. And those features are available without the element of coercion that so many other services seem to deem obligatory.

So please elaborate what it is you want me to see, because I'm not seeing the evil you apparently think is the defining attribute of the service. YouTube brings back repeat users because of the quality of the service. There seems to be little else of a coercive nature that "forces" users to use the service, either as content providers or enjoyers of content. YouTube is as "take it or leave it" as the internet itself. View the videos or don't. Where is the evil?

Greetings Bob9113.

Please forgive me if I disregard all your academic arguments about economic philosophy that are based on one term I used ("free market") because that was the most concise term I could think of using the english language. There is no dogmatic and irrational belief in lassaiz faire at work here.

I'm not sure what features YouTube has that couple users to it, because I've never had a YouTube account, yet I can go to YouTube and watch absolutely anything (with the exception of a few vexing restrictions when using a mobile device). I'm not forced to use YouTube for anything, and plenty of videos I watch are provided by services other than YouTube. Lots of stuff is on YouTube, but I don't feel particularly coupled to it. In fact, I'd classify YouTube as the most uncoupled service on the internet because I am not forced to be a YouTube user in any way, yet I can watch any YouTube video I wish on just about any device I own.

More importantly, I can choose to NOT watch YouTube videos, and there is plenty of interesting information out there that does not use YouTube.

I'm not seeing the closed market you are describing, at least with respect to YouTube. I DO see a closed market with other services that require me to use that service exclusively to see something, but YouTube has been pretty egalitarian in my experience.

So what is your point exactly, and what service do you use that is more free than YouTube?