Could Netflix be run on the Safe network?

Is something like Netflix possible on the Safe network?

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Hey @damon

If you have a look at https://www.n99online.net you will see this is roughly what you ask for - a decentralized platform for artists (on the safe network) to share content with others and earn an income through it

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We were chatting about something similar here too: Scalibility, governance and other stuff - #2 by Traktion

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100% possible and very easy

Just look at the app I made a long time ago and feel free to copy the code to get started:

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Easily, and it’ll perform 100x - 1000x better thanks to the “cache” system that is build in place. This means that all copies that are stored but will distribute to temporarily nodes whose job is to hold the data as a relay. This wouldn’t create problems unlike in clearnet innocent ddos aka “Hugging” the servers. When the server is overloaded, it would give 404. Safenet solves this problem. GoT could be easily watch in 4k to hundred millions watchers.

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Thanks for asking this question. Made me curious about how Netflix delivers data to end-user.

Content Delivery Networks

They’ve created program called Open Connect to cache data with ISP’s to more efficiently serve clients.
https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

It appears that SAFE network will have these solutions built-in by autonomously creating strategic data caches in the network.
SAFE network caches are established with XOR closeness whereas Netflix’s CDN’s and Open Connect program are geographic closeness strategies.
I’m wondering how performance for XOR close peers, however potentially geographically distant, will be experienced for something like streaming a movie.
I’m sure this already been answered a few times in our forums. I’ll go dig in…

Although, I think the initial answer is that a particular peer GETting data will be matched by those XOR close peers that also serve it the quickest anyhow?

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Spoiler

A properly built viewer will take advantage of the parallelism that is inherent to SAFE and will buffer well ahead of what it is playing. So when getting the first 10 or 50 blocks (at start of new position in video) there is that delay then those blocks have *no* delay. And by buffering properly then there is no lag. Basically what netflix achieve by all that equipment in the ISPs POPs/datacentres.

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Why would people pay for something like netflix though it’ll all be free as it’s uploaded by someone else, it’ll be a much better version of the pirate bay.

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This I believe is true

But this is simply asking the question “can it be done”

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Pretty much all people I know use some kind of Netflix now and the only thing they don’t like about it is that the artists only get a tiny amount of what they pay monthly…

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What if a perfect currency like SafeCoin existed and you could easily see every artist’s direct SafeCoin address and you could send any super small micro-SafeCoin amount to them at any time without any transaction fees in the middle?

This is the future economy :slight_smile: everything’s free.
Prices become optional / good faith.

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Technically yes it would be easier to do on SAFE. But philosophically I think Netflix would be opposed to using SAFE for the same reasons they don’t offer Linux support: No DRM support. Like with n99, once a user has a file on SAFE they can do with it what they will. This means that SAFE, even if a user pays to gain access to a file in a system like n99, would still be able to pirate easily. Netflix and big media corp don’t want to simply create the digital version of a video rental store. They want to control when and if you view any of their digital material, in essence control ownership of the data. Since SAFE stands for user controlled data these two philosophies are in direct conflict. It’s just like the orginal copyright conflict. Does the creator own the book or does the person that copied it own the book? And we’re headed off to wage yet ANOTHER war over the same damn philosophical debate.

FYI You can watch netflix on linux. Simply download google-chrome.

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I believe the SAFE browser doesn’t yet have support for streaming, right? Until it does the whole video would have to be downloaded before it can be played.

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Streamed just fine last time I used it. So unless something has changed it works just fine. Just upload a video file and then watch it out of your browser. Streaming really isn’t all that complicated.

Well I am not sure you would be able to tell much difference at the moment. The video files you have on the SAFE network currently are quite small, so it might seem like they stream, even if the whole file is downloaded before it plays.

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There is no streaming capability enabled by the browser atm (a file is fully downloaded before playing) but those small but important features are part of the reason for Peruse I believe. Beaker was heading in another direction and would have required a bit of hacking to get things such as streaming to work.

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Well o long as the files download fast enough for one to effectively use them and load them it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve never really been a fan of the “buffering” system and if files could simply be downloaded and cached that would be great. If I have to wait a little longer to download a full movie than I would to instantly stream it that’s fine. And if a lot of people are downloading a file wouldn’t it then get cached just like any other piece of data?

Downloading an entire movie before playing it would be slow. Anyway it’s just temporary until implemented in the browser. A video app playing video from the network could also implement streaming itself. This is not an issue until larger files are supported anyway and maybe streaming is already supported by then. Actually don’t know the status of peruse, but I am sure that I read about streaming in the old safe browser somewhere, couldn’t find it now though.

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I may be mistaken, but IIRC the network is already capable of streaming and it’s a matter of building an app which makes use of this capability.

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