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Think Tank: Streaming Video Has Massive Carbon Footprint, Needs Regulation

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday July 14 2019, @07:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-about-bitcoin dept.

shortscreen writes:

The Shift Project has released a report pointing the finger at online video as a significant, and growing, cause of greenhouse gas emissions.

From New Scientist:

The transmission and viewing of online videos generates 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, or nearly 1 per cent of global emissions. On-demand video services such as Netflix account for a third of this, with online pornographic videos generating another third.

[...] The authors call for measures to limit the emissions from online videos, such as preventing them from autoplaying and not transmitting videos in high definition when it is unnecessary. For instance, some devices can now display higher resolutions than people can perceive. The report says regulation will be necessary.

No word on the carbon footprints of HTTPS, JavaScript, or advertising.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 14 2019, @05:19PM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday July 14 2019, @05:19PM (#866943) Journal

    Also, how does it break down between DRM and actual rendering? That is, what percentage would you save if you didn't have DRM? All that encryption/decryption surely doesn't come for free.

    Save the planet. Fight DRM! :-)

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 16 2019, @07:42AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday July 16 2019, @07:42AM (#867454) Journal
    Depends on how you count it. The processing power for DRM is pretty negligible compared to modern video codecs, but the studios' insistence on DRM and on draconian copyright enforcement has cost a huge amount of energy to be wasted. If you think streaming is bad, consider how much worse Netflix's original business of DVD rental by post was. If you count the innovations that have been suppressed as a result of DRM (e.g. the edition of iTunes that could rip DVDs, which Apple wasn't allowed to ship by the DVD consortium) then it's probably a lot more.
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