a. okay you can argue that it’s better utilisation of resources not having your pc idle. There is an argument against office computers to be made there.
b makes no sense. The servers serve thousands of people at a time, it is not idling.
I do not have data for this but I’ve noticed that much of the speed I get on torrents come from like top 10 peers all of which are dedicated servers
C. Sure.
My preference has always been for a centralised state owned streaming service. One which allow users to download shit without drm.
It allows routes to be short, minimising hops, also reduces connections made.
Th DRM is the real issue, especially when viewing habits are taken into account. The most watched shows on Netflix for years have been repeat viewings of old sitcoms. The re-watching of shows like Friends, The Office, Seinfeld, etc is especially energy intensive because of DRM. Viewers download the same episode again and again and again, only for the DRM to automatically delete the downloaded file every time. If Netflix was just a folder on a server of DRM-free .mp4 files it would be very efficient.
But it isn’t. Instead, capitalism demands an inefficient over-engineered mess of a system, with a confusing algorithmically reshuffled interface of self-destructing video files so that people can be charged money every month forever and ever.
Good point. All these streaming sites are inefficient by design. Even without the DRM the Server will have to encode the video and audio (or possibly even transcode them if the client only supports certain formats) before sending them to the client. And this happens on the fly every time anyone watches anything. If those streaming sites were all just a fancy looking file server that make you download the source video files directly (kind of like GOG does with video games) then that would greatly reduce energy consumption long-term.
