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From Archive.org, Free Multimedia Hosting for Life

Posted by timothy on from the but-then-they'll-have-to-kill-you dept.

powerline22 writes "From the people who gave you the Internet Archive comes Ourmedia, a place for grassroots media to flourish. Upload anything, maybe a video, some pictures, your custom applescript, and it gets hosted for free, for life. Drupal is hosting the site, and the Internet Archive is providing hosting and bandwidth for the files."

11 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. They did this before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful


    with their caching idea (like coralcache) but 6months later they stopped it, whats to say the same wont happen here ? when people do hosting they want reliability not bandwidth

  2. How Long? by bleckywelcky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How long can this really last? Bandwidth costs money. Servers cost money. Power costs money. Admins need to eat. I think it's a good idea, but just wondering where the funds are going to come from.

    1. Re:How Long? by Xzzy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even so, to some extent it does need to be done.

      I'm not saying everything (or even a measurable portion) that appears on the internet is worth keeping forever, but the worth of any of it is not something those in the present are qualified to judge on.

      In a thousand years, provided humanity hasn't wiped itself out by then, the internet archive (and by extension, ourmedia.org) will be what archaeologists use to learn about us.

    2. Re:How Long? by Deagol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      archive.org has been around for quite some time, and they offer no small service. They've obviously secured funding from somewhere.

      --
      Method of processing duck feet
  3. obl. privacy concern. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    all is well and good, until they get bought by someone else. what happens to the data then? what happens if they go bankrupt, and their hard drives wind up on ebay?

    1. Re:obl. privacy concern. by Max_Abernethy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That would suck, but not for privacy reasons. When you put your stuff up there, it's for everyone to see, anyway - doesn't get any less private than that.

    2. Re:obl. privacy concern. by Rolan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Privacy? Who said anything about privacy? You put your stuff up on the internet, don't expect it to be private, ever.

      --
      - AMW
  4. World's Youngest Video Blogger by filmmaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The segment about the "World's Youngest Video Blogger" is amazing. The time to media was a matter of a couple weeks and she goes from her first iMovie lesson from her father to being on ABC's "People of the Year" show.

    It then hit me: she's a "bigger" star online than on the television. Just watching that piece inadvertantly acts as a portent for a time when television is more or less culturally irrelevant, or more to the point, indistinguishable from "web" media.

    --
    I Want To Believe
  5. Depends on the economics. by PxM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The ideal hope would be that the bandwith costs involved becomes cheaper at a rate equal to or greater than the bandwith usage. That is, the net cost remains constant or less than the influx of money from public and private sources. Given that bandwith usage by clients will rise as bandwith costs for them drop, this might be too optimistic, but economics is always a hard thing to predict when it is so technologically dependent. They could also try to get people like Google to back this project as part of their new library initative.

    --
    Want a free iPod?
    Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
    Wired article as proof

  6. Re:Smells like a cheap ploy by HyperChicken · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Considering (according to the Slashdot story, which doesn't mean much) Internet Archive is behind it, I would assume it's legit. That's what Archive.org does; Store stuff.

    --
    Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
  7. Re:Repeat after me kids.... by nicky_d · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "FREE".

    That's a mantra for C21st America if ever I heard one. Of course there's such a thing as 'free'. Yeah, someone pays, but if it ain't me, then it's free. If I end up with two copies of a book and I give one away, I've paid for both but the surplus copy is entirely free to whoever I give it to. If I help a friend out with their PC, I pay with my time, but the service is free to them. Things are sometimes done in kindness, or in the service of a better world, even in this day and age. Don't let 'them' convince you otherwise.

    Of course, free iPod schemes are a different matter, and I'd imagine this kind of cynical appeal to the frugally covetous is what you're talking about. But I don't equate archive.org with the architects of those kind of schemes. It IS still possible to get something good and decent for free, and that's something to be thankful for.