Re: [Tools-discuss] [Manycouches] Proposal to discontinue live mp3 audio streams at IETF meetings

[Alexandre Petrescu <[e-mail]>]

Le 01/10/2020 à 21:42, Brian E Carpenter a écrit :
>> * This removes a mechanism that allowed people to listen to a
>> session in real-time without paying a registration fee.
>> 
>> There will be ongoing discussion and tuning of the meeting
>> registration structure. In the meantime, the fee waiver program is
>> available and being improved.
> 
> I don't think that's a tools-discuss decision alone. It's been a
> significant point of principle discussed (e.g.) in SHMOO, hence the
> extra CC.
> 
> It seems to me that the principle of the fee waiver and when it's 
> ethical to use it is still not clear, and we don't know whether it
> is financially viable in the medium to long term. Until that's
> settled, I'm a bit uneasy about dropping the mp3 streams, precisely
> because they do not need pre-registration.
> 
> (If meetecho had a "read only" or observer mode without
> pre-registration, this problem would go away instantly.)

It would be advantageous to continue the streaming of audio, for a
registration-less observer read-only kind of participation.

Maybe a thing to improve is the format of the data.  A better performing
format than mp3, why not an IETF recent technology (ogg?), with a better
support from free software tools that are widely available, could be good.

Alex

> 
> Regards Brian
> 
> Regards Brian Carpenter
> 
> On 02-Oct-20 03:31, Robert Sparks wrote:
>> We propose to discontinue producing live mp3 audio streams for
>> IETF meetings, starting with IETF 109 and we want to hear from the
>> community before we do.
>> 
>> At many past meetings we have produced live mp3 streams for each 
>> session. These steams have been associated with physical meeting
>> rooms, and appeared before and during the session as a link on the
>> agenda page to a URL like 
>> 'http://mp3.conf.meetecho.com/ietf/ietf<some_number_associated_with_the_room>.m3u'.
>>
>>
>>
>> 
For the last several meetings, these have only been available as a live
>> stream. Recordings of that stream have not been made available
>> after the meeting. The full video recording provided by Meetecho
>> has served as the way to listen to (or watch) any given session
>> after the fact.
>> 
>> Further, for the last several meetings, the live streams have seen
>> very light use, on the order of 10 uses for IETF 108.
>> 
>> Now that we are holding more meetings online, we have a requirement
>> to allow meetings to run outside their scheduled times. Allowing
>> the live streams to run outside their scheduled times will require
>> changing how they are represented, to no longer be associated with
>> "rooms" or "tracks". The code refactor at both the datatracker and
>> at meetecho to support would not be a huge effort, but it also
>> would not be tiny. Instead, we feel that removing this complexity, 
>> recognizing that the regular meetecho connection and recordings
>> satisfy the need, is the better use of our resources. That holds
>> true even for future in-person meetings.
>> 
>> There are several points that have been considered while arriving
>> at this proposal:
>> 
>> * Chairs use the recordings to fill in minutes.
>> 
>> For the last several meetings, the chairs have been using the
>> Meetecho recordings for this purpose. Recordings of the live mp3
>> streams haven't been available.
>> 
>> * Some participants (especially ADs) want to listen to more than
>> one meeting at a time.
>> 
>> Meetecho allows joining multiple sessions.
>> 
>> * Some participants may not have the bandwidth or a new enough
>> computer to run meetecho.
>> 
>> The use of the mp3 streams has been very low at the last several 
>> meetings. This population isn't using the mp3 streams to address
>> the posited limitations.  If this is a     concern that some people
>> think they will experience then we can look at asking Meetecho to
>> allow sending only audio (muting all video).
>> 
>> * This removes a mechanism that allowed people to listen to a
>> session in real-time without paying a registration fee.
>> 
>> There will be ongoing discussion and tuning of the meeting
>> registration structure. In the meantime, the fee waiver program is
>> available and being improved.
>> 
>> Please send comments by 16 Oct 2020 either to
>> [e-mail] or directly to [e-mail].
>> 
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>> 
> 
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