68 START-UP ALLEY Seedess
PEER PRESSURE Seedess is based on making legitimate use of a technology better known for as a tool for piracy
a few select clients. Lalasava hopes to take the beta testing public in late January. “At the moment we’re working on releasing an open source transparent P2P video streaming library as well as a hosted solution which will be fully interoperable with existing video streaming and broadcasting systems,” he says. For such a unique idea, it’s surprising to learn that this is a bootstrapped project which Lalasava works on part time while working remotely (from Bali) for a San Diego-based company. “To ensure our product is fully open source we are not pursing external funding. Our costs will be offset by larger enterprises that require hosted and customised solutions for specific video streaming needs,” he says. A self-professed “digital nomad”, Lalasava has set up small companies before, including a web design company and an email client, but he acknowledges, “this is the first start-up that has a potentially global market address.” The company is also exploring how it might ultilise blockchain technology for attaching licensing and copyright to P2P content, which will allow copyright holders to track and monetise video content distributed through the network. “At the moment BitTorrent has been just enough to allow us to experiment with P2P video streaming,” Lalasava explains. “But when we want to tap into monetisation and to allow for the sharing of licensed content on a public network, that would require us to go to the blockchain.” Right now however, Lalasava is in the process of assessing whether there’s a big enough demand for the platform, and is awaiting feedback from the open source community before he sets to work on a hosted version. “The main aim right now is to get the message out there that you are able to stream video peer-to-peer in an open source way that is fully secure,” he says.
SEEDESS
COUNTRY: BALI/USA STARTED: 2016
“The monetary barrier to entry for streaming video is too high,” argues Seedess founder Gabiriele Lalasava. “Looking at how video has become such a huge part of the internet, we need a way to distribute the costs to the viewers.” Lalasava’s solution has been to take video streaming peer-to-peer – enabling users to self-publish and distribute video to other users by leveraging the WebRTC function in their browsers to enable real-time communication. Seedess enables users to enhance the efficiency of this P2P video sharing and reduce latency by stitching WebRTC together with the BitTorrent protocol to create a code that generates a private video sharing network. The founder is keen to emphasise that it is the BitTorrent technology that Seedess is using and not the infamous public file- sharing network, which has long been associated with piracy (with good reason – 99% of file shares made through this network are illegal). “The BitTorrent network’s association with piracy makes it easy to overlook this hugely successful technology,” argues Lalasava. “When applied correctly the technology itself can be highly secure and currently unparalleled in its P2P scaling potential,” he claims. For streaming companies who are not quite ready to ditch their servers, there’s
also an algorithm that would make a hosted version of Seedess a useful backup tool in instances where their content delivery networks slow down. “It allows streamers to broadcast P2P but only if the latency is less than their CDN. This allows your video never to be slower than your CDN which is treated as another peer in the chain,” Lalasava explains. The real attraction for many firms however will be the cost savings: Lalasava claims that his network can “more than halve” a company’s bandwidth costs. It also gives broadcasters and video publishers the opportunity to own their video streaming content without having to distribute via third party platforms such as YouTube. “No one owns their own video content anymore,” he says. “Developing Seedess was a way to let regular Joes own their video publishing – at very low cost.” The open source product is currently in private beta, with testing taking place among
THE BITTORRENT NETWORK’S ASSOCIATIONWITH PIRACYMAKES IT EASY TO OVERLOOK THIS HUGELY SUCCESSFUL TECHNOLOGY
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