If you believe the Internet should remain a free and open platform for everyone, you need to learn about GetMiro.com.

Whether your video masterpiece is your baby?s birthday party, or your company?s marketing demonstration, internet video is getting easier to distribute all the time. As video producers, we applaud the opportunity to share our unique visions.

Video producers who stake out an Internet audience need to be concerned with net neutrality and help ensure that the direction of the net continues toward openness. Easy distribution of individually produced video gives anyone who wants it a voice.

WHAT IS GETMIRO.COM ALL ABOUT?
This site is a non profit dedicated to providing anybody and everybody a platform for their internet video. Their mission statement includes the goal to ?open media and culture to more people than ever before.?

Unlike commercial sites, GetMiro actively promotes maintaining the Internet as an open source platform for the little guy. They want to make sure no voice is ever silenced by the elite, rich and powerful.

That’s a noble goal. The Internet needs to remain free from corporate domination and control. Get Miro is operated by the Participatory Culture Foundation, PCF, based in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

Their dream is to build a new, open mass medium of online television. To do that, they operate the Miro internet TV platform, which is ?designed to make watching internet video channels as easy as watching TV.? Even better, all are encouraged to participate on their own broadcasting a channel. Unlike expensive, traditional TV, everyone willing to post an online video will have a voice.

According to their website, their decision to go non-profit confirms their dedication to this goal. ?So many times we’ve seen for-profit companies lose their values as financial pressures mount, founders leave, or they get acquired. We want to make sure that can’t happen.?

Unlike corporatre media, PCF want to be accountable to their user community and the public. No venture capitalists or shareholders can force the board of directors to go in a direction that’s bad for users but good for the bottom line.

As television moves online, we face a crucial decision. Will it be open like the internet? Or will it be controlled by a small number of gatekeepers like cable and broadcast television? Think of all the diversity you find on the Internet now.

How would you feel if some bean counter somewhere decided you shouldn?t be wasting your time watching funny viral videos, so they shut it off.

Ouch!
At PFC, they go by this philosophy: ?Let’s make television more open and exciting than it’s ever been.?

Think of the endless possibilities!
Three principles of openness.
The minds at PFC created these guidelines for a open, and accessible online video system.

A. Open Access
Anyone who wants to create, should be able to create. With the decentralized structure of the internet, there is no reason to have gatekeepers. Miro is built to connect with any online publisher that has video RSS feeds, whether they are individuals or video hosting companies. Content creators know they can always reach their audience in Miro because it?s a flexible system and works with different hosts.

B. Open Standards
Any web browser can view any website because the web was designed with specific standards that are open for anyone to use. This openness is what makes the web so much more vibrant than the ‘online’ systems that it replaced (Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, etc.). Miro is built on several open standards, including HTTP, HTML, BitTorrent, and RSS.

C. Open Source
The source code that makes Miro work is open for anyone to read, change, and build upon. Just as the open-source Firefox has revolutionized web browsing, we hope that Miro will move online video in a better direction. Anyone who wants to make Miro better can do so.
What the company is working on.

Miro is the core project for the PCF group. They?re working to improve the software, expand their user base, and push online video in a continually more open direction.

Video RSS feeds are central to the management of Miro. A video RSS feed is how Miro ?talks? to video publishers and distributes new content for download. It’s an open technology that anyone can use.
Video RSS should remain at the center of internet video. RSS supports many applications, not just Miro. The group claims their goal isn’t to dominate online video?but to push the industry towards openness.

If you care about the future of online videos, there’s lots of ways you can get involved.: subscribe

The Miro Technology
Miro is free, open-source software, licensed under the GPL. They’ve built on top of excellent open-source projects and anyone is free to use our code to make something new.

Just as important as the openness of our code is the openness of the technical standards that it employs. RSS, BitTorrent, HTTP, HTML, and CSS are all open technologies that help create a level playing field for video creators to distribute their work. Viewers can connect to any publisher in the world. Internet video is television without borders.

Video RSS is the core? a perfect example of openness at work. When Miro connects to a video publishing website, RSS is the language they speak.

Miro automatically looks to see if there are any new videos available and begin a download. Since RSS is free, public technology, anyone can build software like Miro that uses RSS.

What that means for publishers is they only need to create a single RSS feed in order to connect with lots of different video players. With closed, proprietary technologies there are gatekeepers who control who can publish and who can watch. Let?s not let that philosophy ever take over the Internet.

WHO EXACTLY ARE THESE FOLKS?
Their websites list the following ?Who?s Who? as the individuals operating GetMiro.com

Board of Directors
Tiffiniy Cheng, President
Tiffiniy is a co-Founder of PCF. She is also the Executive Director of the Participatory Politics Foundation.
Joel Cohen
Joel is a television producer, director, and editor, best known for producing The 90′s, a critically acclaimed reality magazine series on PBS.
Cory Doctorow
Cory writes for BoingBoing.net, and is a science fiction writer, professor, and has worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for many years.
Dave Glassco
Dave is a geek, musician, and father living in Austin, Texas.
Rick Hess
Rick Hess is a San Francisco-based high technology executive, advisor, and political activist. A former Oracle/PeopleSoft/Arbor/Hyperion VP and CEO of Ellianz, Rick is in awe of the next generation of techies who really want to help improve the human condition using technology.
John Lilly
John is the Chief Operating Officer at Mozilla Corporation, creators of the Firefox web browser.
Peter Parisot
Peter is Director of Start-up Services at Skyline Public Works. He is an attorney and has worked as a political consultant and campaign manager.
Nicholas Reville, Treasurer
Nicholas is a co-founder of PCF and is the Executive Director.
Zephyr Teachout
Zephyr is National Director of the Sunlight Foundation. Zephyr was Director of Online Organizing for Howard Dean’s Campaign, a lecturer at the University of Vermont, a lawyer, and a fellow at the Berkman Center.
Holmes Wilson, Secretary
Holmes is a co-Founder of PCF. He has led several successful online advocacy projects and is also on the board of the Participatory Politics Foundation.
Major Funders
Skyline Public Works
Mitch Kapor Foundation
Surdna Foundation
Mozilla Foundation
Knight Foundation

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