DTube 0.2: Faster to serve videos, Stronger to resist censorship

First I need to thank each and every person who either upvoted, commented on my article, or used DTube since its launch. The number of reactions I gathered after posting my previous article on steemit.com, is simply staggering. The way this project was released, with the number of users we serve, and the total bandwidth we consumed in the first weeks, was a very good to test for DTube to see how far it can be taken. Thank you all.

Copyrighted and Extremist content
I really didn't want to blog about that, but we have all seen the copyrighted content posted on the blockchain recently, as well as more recently some 'far-right winged' political videos that are usually censored on YouTube. And many people have been asking about my stance on that privately.

For me, these two problems are the same. The community must deal with it. I cannot do anything to stop it myself, I don't control anything but the dtube.video domain. I'm sure STEEM is full of invested people who want the platform to succeed, and they know which contents serve our interests and which don't.

If the upvotes outweigh the downvotes, the video goes up and might be displayed in hot/trending. Otherwise, it ends at $0 and won't be stored. I believe any living thing is able to see good from wrong, and every STEEM account has at least 6 SP, so why not use it? If you think something shouldn't be on DTube or SteemIt, just downvote it!

Business plan?
I intentionally hadn't put any thought into this aspect of the project before launch. After getting the numbers and seeing what we can expect, it is obvious a platform like DTube can become a huge success in the future, and that many people will try to compete with DTube. DTube currently has 25% fees on videos (0% on comments), and it would be easy for someone to compete by simply lowering the fees on the upload.

I believe there is no winning strategy. Most existing video platforms (including porn websites) will be interested in what we are doing. They will eventually end up understanding and copying what we are doing. These companies have been in the video platform business for years, and they gathered a lot of information, did a lot of research, and they have competent staff that have been working with videos for a while. They have existing infrastructure, legal entities, and lawyers. If these people start competing with DTube, DTube won't be able to run as fast as them.

Hence the choice, of not turning DTube into a business. The 25% fees will cover the development costs, for a couple of months, then once the project is solid and we stop working on it, paying the fees will only remain as a defaulted option.

Money, staff, and community
The total earnings of @dtube can be seen at https://steemdb.com/app/dtube/earnings (built by @jesta). As you can see, we are averaging 200 SP per day. That is a lot of income and it is enough to find a competent second developer as well as a designer to help this project going faster. I am already in the process of interviewing and will pick wisely.

We also now have not one but two channels on steemit.chat, #dtube and dtube-promo. Anyone is welcomed. I also created a private discord for the 3rd party providers (@nannal, @thekyle), future staff, and a few content creators doing well on DTube.

Who needs a domain?
Hey @heimindanger, aren't you in some legal risks? Couldn't the domain be taken down just like thepiratebay.org ??

This isn't a real question, but I received the same one at least 20 times. TPB is a traditional website, with a back-end database. When this database gets unplugged, no more pirates. Here, a blockchain is our database, and you cannot unplug it that easily!

The domain is a concern. I could have to shut it down at one point if I receive a DMCA takedown. It already happened to a past website of mine, and there wasn't much to be done. That's bad. But, because there is always a but, DTube can easily be hosted anywhere. I could use GitHub pages, or even my Dropbox to serve DTube to the world. As we use IPFS on DTube already, it makes sense to go with IPNS (Interplanetary Naming System) that allows us to do this. Basically, DTube can be hosted on IPFS, and we don't really need a domain no more. Check it out at this ugly but functional link:

https://ipfs.io/ipns/Qmb8hgdQoyotsnUj3JKWvWzcfA9Jx4Ak2ao1XzCVLfDtuB/
It took me a night of CPU power to find this hash ending with 'dtub'
You can consider this link as a mirror that will never die. However, I will keep the domain working for as long as I can. It's more convenient for everyone.

Now let me introduce the changes in 0.2: