If I were to base my entire understanding of the system on your post (read the Article? On Slashdot?) I'd imagine this is like Folding@Home, but you get paid for your machine time? Doesn't make sense on modern computers - when it finds its level it's unlikely that you'd receive as much as you spent on the additional power. But for those of us running older machines with poor power management, it makes more sense to run something like that in the background - we're using the electricity anyway, so may as well do something useful with it. I guess I should go read that article. :)

Here's an interesting idea : Maybe they're bothering *because* you can't stream it yet? It's a neat way of showing that broadband in the US (and here in the UK too, for that matter) simply isn't fast enough for developing new services - in most areas it can barely handle the existing ones. The public reacts badly when they realise that their connections aren't fast enough, but the connections people abroad are using *are* - and we all know how much Joe Public loves to complain.

If the telecoms companies are fast enough, they might be able to spin this to make it look like it's youtube that's broken - most people don't know enough to question that. But, if it makes the media - or enough people who *do* know - complain about it loudly enough, then it puts some real pressure on the ISPs, and if were lucky we might see some real investment in the infrastructure.

It's easier to show it this way than to try and push the bitrate up on the videos - if they try to jump the rates, people will assume Youtube's broken and use competitors that are running lower rates. Not because they're any better mind, but because they don't stutter every ten seconds.