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

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: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 15 2019, @03:38PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 15 2019, @03:38PM (#867216) Journal

    Prior to YouTube there were videos on the web. And you downloaded them. And then viewed them.

    When YouTube appeared, it was convenient. Or not. Depending if you had Flash, and was on Linux.

    But why must we waste the bandwidth to watch the same video a second time? Why not download it once and keep it locally for as long as the downloader wants to keep it? Ah, because ads, and they need you to keep coming back to their site for each and every time you want to watch.

    And, because of copyright.

    But back then it wasn't difficult at all to figure out the URL to directly download Youtube videos as local files.

    By the time Netflix came along, I and everyone else had already accepted the idea that you re-download a video every time you watch it.

    There was talk about how Netflix traffic was the vast majority of all packets transferred on the internet. So why not download the video exactly once?

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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