An internet entrepreneur saved 20,000 free online college lectures (and more) after the government declared them illegal.
Berkeley once had 20,000 college lectures available on their website. Anyone could watch for free. But then government said the videos were illegal because they didn't have captions for the deaf.
Captioning 20,000 videos would cost millions. So instead, Berkeley just took down all the videos. That meant nobody outside the college would be able to see them.
But one person didn't let that happen.
Jeremey Kaufmann just started a new service called LBRY (pronounced "library"). He posted the Berkeley videos and thousands of others.
LBRY is kind of like YouTube–but unlike YouTube, it can't be censored.
Kaufmann says he isn't afraid to host the videos on his operation, because unlike Berkeley, he didn't create them. He says that means he's not legally responsible. We'll see. One never knows what our authoritarian government will do.
Three cheers for entrepreneurs like Kaufmann who risk their time and money to keep information like these college lectures available.
You can see a few current vids being offered there on their home page.
Look at their FAQ.
It might be easier to start with what LBRY is not: it is not just another corporate media service like YouTube or iTunes or Spotify. It is first and foremost a new protocol that allows artists to upload their content to a network of hosts (like BitTorrent) and set a price per stream or download (like iTunes) or give it away for free (like YouTube without ads). What makes this all possible is the blockchain technology developed by the founder of Bitcoin. Do you have to understand any of this to use and enjoy LBRY? No. Does it still matter to users? Yes!
So it is a YouTube-type app where you can sell or give away videos, provided someone is willing to host that video for others.
The software is all completely open-source. So if you don't like their LBRY app or they at some point won't host your content, you can use their software and start your own LBRY app just for your own content, provided you can get users to install your version of the LBRY app and watch vids off your servers.
