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Miro vs. Joost: The Doctorow Doctrine

Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing’s slayer of DRM, writes this morning about open source Joost-killer “Miro.”

Miro has done extensive outreach to indie creators, has no privacy-invading tracking of your viewing habits, delivers HD video, and is built on free software and open standards. [from BB]

Download the free software, pick the channels you want (over 2,500 of them at present, and anyone can publish new channels), and Miro will subscribe to your favorite net-shows, checking their RSS feeds for new episodes and downloading them with BitTorrent… It doesn’t matter what video format the shows are in, because Miro includes VLC, the open video player that can play pretty much every file-format on the net. [from BB]

Cory then points us to the Miro vs. Joost page on the GetMiro site, which summarizes Miro’s benefits vis-a-vis Joost, and wraps it all up with “Do you want corporations to decide what you watch?”

A few thoughts:

Yes. Most people do want corporations to decide what they watch. That’s what the vast, vast majority of people have accepted already with cable TV, satellite TV, BlockBuster or NetFlix for rentals, and so on. If you really think about why that is, it makes sense: media corporation’s programming decisions reflect aggregated demand trends - i.e.: to produce popular programming, they produce shows that people will want to watch - i.e.: they’re acting as a content filter based on their gestalt understanding of popular culture.

That understanding is never perfect, and to be sure media co.’s are guilty of trying to manipulate popular culture and dumb it down (boy bands, “reality” tv, and everything else banal). But - independent programming isn’t inherently any better - take a look around YouTube and see how culturally significant or politically insightful the average user-created, crowd-sourced, indie-produced net clip is.

So - regardless of my own political affiliations, do I consider freedom from corporate rule to be a source of competitive advantage for Miro? No. Consumers want to consume. Not filter, sift, evaluate, subscribe, and then consume.

Corporations remove all of the barriers between consumers and consumption, and consumers have stated - more or less unanimously - that they’re willing to pay the financial and cultural (reduced selection) price for that value proposition. Joost recognizes this, and capitalizes on it.

Ultimately, Miro is positioning itself as a long-tail content portal - an entirely valid niche product category, where it will no doubt enjoy success in a number of market segments. Positioning itself vis-a-vis Joost, is IMHO folly, however - its a different value proposition that appeals to different usage scenarios and different markets.

Hopefully Miro does better than the last, almost identical entrant in this market: crowd favourite FireAnt (see initial review comparing FireAnt to Joost, later problems, and “acquisition“).

boing boing, cory doctorow, doctorow, fireant, joost miro

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