Charbax.com

first posted in this group.

There shouldn’t be ratings, cause the “Popular videos” area is allready all about some funny videos which many many people view and download.

The thing Google needs to implement is a way that you Digg videos so  that Google can make a personalized list of free and payable videos which Google has figured out is exactly of your taste.. Some system like http://last.fm and http://linkedfeed.com

Somehow people should be able to upload their videos to Google, they get processed also with voice-recognition so Google know all the words that are said in the video, so the video transcripts are searchable. And it should be so that people do not need to think about marketing and promoting their video! If it is a good video, then the public should be watching and downloading it automatically!

And I would like to offer all my videos for free, but it would be great if Google could enable people to donate money through Google Wallet to support me. Artists should have their artists page like a video blog, where all of their videos are displayed, be able to setup future projects pitches where any Google user can invest whatever the amount they want and they become thus micro-investor in the artists future
production. Something like 50/50 of the revenue of the completed production would go to the artist and to all the micro-investors. Where the micro-investors though get a smaller and smaller share of the revenue the more people download it, pay for it and donate for it later.

Just like the “my starred topics” of Google groups (this place here where we are debating). I don’t think there will be ratings of 1-10 like imdb nor 1-5 or anything like that. There will be your starred videos and your unstared videos.

Let’s for example say there is video A B C D E F

you watch and you put a star next to video A B C

I watch and put a star next to B C D

then Google will tell you “You should probably check out video D” and it will tell me “You should probably check out video A”..

This is basic quality/recommendation personalized system. I think Google will go for something like that, though there will always be somekind of “Popular” listing also, like simply taking the globally most popular or most starred videos.

I think when this quality/recommendations system will be integrated, it might be that we will want to sit for hours and we will keep discovering more and more shows that fit exactly our taste.. It will be fascinating.

The place for comments will be the video blogs. Google will probably combine their blogger system with Google Video system. So you will very simply automatically have a blog, and you can, as the content provider, choose if you want comments enabled or not, and you might even have some comments moderations tools if you want..

For donations to be a successfull model, I think it is important that the content provider has to accept to show publicly exactly how much donations has been received yet compared to how many people have downloaded the video. So that an artist who makes alot of quality content and does not reveice donations, that the visitor will think “ah, that’s unfair, I want to support this artist”. Or the opposite could work also “ah, this video is not worth that much donations, I’ll skip doing as so many others have allready done, unless I see this artist can really produce more and better content”.

It will be a big thing with users subscribing to artists video RSS feeds. So everytime you see some video you really like you can stay in touch with the source. Firstly by easilly being able to send a message to the artist for example “hey I really like your video” to the more dedicated approach of going to ones Gbuy account and spending a dollar or two on eigther donating or on investing in a specific project that the artist has listed on his page.

You can limit abuse on investors money being used for other purpose is that the artist can be held accounted for. An artist has built up his fanbase of trusted micro-investors. By firstly releasing cheaply produced content and steadilly making better and better content, to the point where there are enough investors giving a dollar each to a certain project so the artist has reached the specific goal of for example 1000€ or something like that, that would be the cost to for example pay a couple of actors and getting some lighting and sound equipment for a few days. And just like small stocks on the stock market, they have to prove with results that they can make money, the artist will have to prove that he can continue making quality content and that more and more people download his videos.

I have posted this at the Google Video group.

It seems the video is crypted and only playable by the account who buys the download..

I would think the best way is that anyone can get a .gvp file or a .gvi file, and if it is DRM it asks to login. And once logged in it checks if that user is allowed to watch the video, ifnot it simply pops up a simple popup inside Google Video Player that says “Pay 0,99$” and asks for the password to be typed in before purchase. And if a user does not yet have a credit card athentified for its account it would show a different formular where the user simply types in the credit card info and does the authentification like 3-D Secure and accepts that the credit card info is store on Google servers, and can handle limits or determine fund to transfer directly from within the Google Video Player.

As it seems to be right now, you cannot pass a copy to your friend of the 1GB NBA .gvi file burnt on a DVD, because he is asked to login as the user who bought the download.. That is I think useless waste of bandwidth, as every user has to get it centrally downloaded from Google’s servers.

If the same actual .gvi DRM file could be played by multiple accounts by simply authorising online, then .gvi files could be distributed through p2p using bittorrent, burnt on DVDs or whatever, to save Google’s bandwidth, and when this happens Google should charge a small fee per sold video, as Google didn’t have to actually serve the video file download from its server, it just handles the authorisation of playback.

If DRM files are different for each user, this might not make it possible for a future version of Google Video player to integrate p2p technology like BitTorrent, this would simply be a waste of bandwidth.

A future Google Video Player software should I think make it possible to click a “Donate amount to artist”, where the user simply types in the amount of $ to donate and the donation is done. That is if the artist accepts to receive donations, and also the user can see statistics of hoe many views, downloads, pays and donations the artist has had, all these statistics should be visible in the Google Video player.

I think that the user should be able to chose how to be charged on the credit card. The user can say “I only want to pay by adding funds to the account in advance, do not draw more than this amount”.

So for example you could add 50$ to your Google wallet account, which you can use to buy Google videos and make donations to any artist on Google Video who accepts donations (could be everyone of them). Thus you would also make sure you don’t spend more than a certain amount on videos.

Google cannot provide free downloads forever, specially if they start providing High Definition downloads. So the price for the download will also fluctuate depending on current offer and demand of bandwidth. As
every user will be able to provide their upload bandwidth to Google, and people will be able to earn money by uploading on the p2p delivery system controlled centrally by Google, so if you upload a little more than you download, your downloads will be free, and if you upload even more you will even earn credit which you can use to pay artists for their videos. Eigther for paying before like current DRM system or paying after you watch the video, as a voluntary donation.

When you donate money to an artist, you can remain anonymnous if you want. Or your identity can be communicated to the artist, who can in return subscribe you to his newsletter and video channel. Thus if you loike an artist and want to get latest info on future project and new releases, you will have to donate some amount to support that artist. You should also be able to manage donation subscriptions, where a certain amount is donated to an artist regularilly. For example you would be donating 2$ every month to a certain artist, be able to manage all those donation subscriptions. And a donation can also let you contact the artist directly. Or other special fans features which the artist can control. Like for example participation in a private forum, private chat, and more. And a minimum donation fee can be set by the artist.

Artists can setup projects, with project description, like writing down a pitch for a project, or presenting a pitch for a project in video form. For example the artist talking to the camera saying “I want to do this and this”.. Then the artist can write the amount of money he hopes to receive quickly in micro-investments by the users, and when the minimum investment amount is reached, then the donation transaction is processed. Making all the micro-donators actually become micro-investors in a project. Which when it goes online, is sold in the Store or makes money otherwise with DVD sales, TV appearance, Cinema appearance.. Automatically the users who firstly invested in the project would be able to receive the small return on their investment that they deserve.

For example, would you like to invest 50$ in Tarantino’s next movie? You will be able to do it, and when the movie is released, you can get your return on your investment. And all along the way you can receive special access to special features which Tarantino has decided to offer his fans on the internet. Tarantino’s film becomes a blockbuster and a huge Google Video Store success? Then you might get a return on your investment of like 200$ into your Google wallet account. Which you can then use to invest in other artists that you think are talented and so on..

This would be a solution for decentralising the investment required for film productions, and this will give the desired artistic freedom to the artist, who would allways be able to find the investment he deserves from his fans directly on the internet.