cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21474523

Youtube was originally a match-making/dating site. Sadly it expanded beyond that into a technofeudal fiefdom that takes 45% of ad revenue from contributors. YouTube has amassed a rich collection of repair videos, both general repair and specific repairs to specific problems on particular appliances. It guts me that a protectionist unethical surveillance advertiser has exclusive control over repair information that they have jailed, restricted access to, and held hostage from all but their boot-licking pawns (3 billion of them). Google has recently locked down the platform to prevent the Tor network for fetching the content while also going around with a stick to swat the Invidious nodes that make fetching videos possible.

Google’s assault on user freedoms has ensured (for example) that I cannot go to the library (which has an uncapped Internet connection) and download videos covering how to repair my appliances so that I can go home and play them while repairing, as many times as needed. Google expects me to either drag my whole washing machine into the public library, or to memorize the steps. Try memorizing the steps to fix a Canon paper feeder. It’s probably 100 or so steps; so many steps that there is even a separate re-assembly video.

It is unreasonable to demand that repairers:

  • have an uncapped internet connection at home
  • watch copious commercial ads (some of us are ethically opposed to advertising)
  • support Google (we should have a right to boycott companies that were fined $170 million for collecting data non-consentually and exercising that right should not block repair when repair is in the public interest to avoid e-waste)

What is the fix here? Libraries are blocked by copyright that is designed to feed Google’s greed for ad revenue. Even if we could ask local govs to declare Google’s copyright on repair videos unenforcable, the videos still need to be obtained.

I think we need to invent a tech solution. Such as an app that combines the concept of bittorrent with a YouTube API whereby every peer who manages to access a video seeds it as a torrent and also grabs the transcript in a text file.

Any ideas what could reasonably be asked of a local gov to address this problem? In principle, it should involve public libraries because Google has ruined the service of the public library in this regard.