December 2007

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the use of video on the web, especially around the

The workshop agenda for the W3C Video on the Web Workshop seems very telling to me. (Note, I was not there, so I am only looking at position statements.) The roster includes people from Disney, CBS Interactive, Sony, Nokia, Real Networks, Adobe, Turner, Samsung and many others. The position papers are worth a look because they really reflect the thinking of the various parties. Many of them come from the broadcasters – “How do I turn the web into a tv set?” (i.e. the Accenture paper or the one from Disney.) The Disney one is interesting because they at least understand the impact of what standards mean:

We believe that standardization of web-based video and related technologies will primarily benefit non-commercial producers and users of video. WDIG, like other commercial entertainment companies, is in the business of creating compelling online experiences, and our goals may at times conflict with the accessibility and openness that standards encourage.

This much is true. What’s interesting is how those from the content producing side of the house contrast with those who are actually in the business of giving people the tools to produce and publish their own content. (i.e. the Canon position paper.) And then there’s people like Adobe, who use it as an opportunity to tell people how awesome they think they are.

The web got where it is today by being radically open. I’m not talking about open source and I’m not talking about community-based development or even standards, really. I’m talking about the fact that every act of consumption on the web also creates an opportunity for creation. Every time you download a web page it’s easy to open up the source for the page, figure out how something works and then do it yourself. And it’s still trivial to find space on the web and post what you want. Anyone can stop being a consumer and start being a producer. That’s what radically open really means, and I have yet to find that kind of thinking on the video side of the house. Look at the papers above. They are all about technology or standards or advertising revenue models. But there’s little talk about the context for the discussion. What kind of web do you want to create? Because that’s what is at stake here.

I strongly believe that what we don’t need to do is to bring video to the web. What I really think we need to do is to bring the web to video. That spirit of openness that lets anyone build a new way to participate. The fantastic array of ubiquitous tools for the web that people can use to publish, create and consume is just staggering, and the web isn’t even that old. It’s just getting started.

That’s why the codec discussion is important. Making a mistake at the codec level and not choosing something (or creating something!) that lets people build around it and on top of it is to miss the main lesson from the last decade of the growth of the Open Web. The problem doesn’t seem to be willingness, exactly. Lots of us are willing to take those first steps to finding something that works well. I suspect that the problem is that those who apparently have to buy into the decision have so much to lose. (Even Mozilla, who is by industry standards is tiny, still has much to lose to submarine patents and lawsuits.)

I don’t think that the current producers of content matter as much in this discussion. They will continue to protect content using their own tools because anything that would allow the growth that I think we want to create wouldn’t be acceptable to them. And they still have Flash and other proprietary tools to fall back on if they wish. I think what we want to create is something that plays to the strengths of the web. Video as the web would have designed it.

Ogg Theora seems like a good place to start. Or maybe something like Dirac, a codec I keep hearing about. Given the things that make the web useful (search is an integral part of the web, indexing, re-using other people’s content, deep linking – tagging is not enough!) and given how much work has to be done to get “web video” really up to those standards we need something that can grow and change, much like how the original HTML implementations in Mosaic and Netscape grew into the web we have today. We have to be prepared for a long journey, but we have to be careful not to hamstring ourselves into something that limits our ability to improve what’s already out there.

This post ended up being longer than I intended. For those of you who made it this far, I apologize. But my point is this – that the context for the discussion about this particular issue is in many ways even more important than the discussion itself because it lays down the goals and the rules for the discussion. Being radically open, making baseline choices that allow for growth and change, that allow the creation of great tools by anyone and that create a wide ecosystem of people who will become invested over time seem like many of the key factors that will not just bring videos as they exist today to the web, but instead will change the way that we look at video. And that feels like the right goal. Creating change and improving the web.