LBRY (), is a blockchain-based

file-sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include ...

and payment network that powers

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

platforms, primarily

social networks A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for a ...

and video platforms. LBRY's creators also created Odysee, an open-source video-sharing website that uses the network, and that was split into a separate company on October 1, 2021. Video platforms built on LBRY, such as Odysee, have been described as decentralized alternatives to

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. The company has described Odysee and other platforms it has built utilizing its LBRY protocol as platforms for

free speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recog ...

and lightly moderates content, including removing pornography or the promotion of violence and terrorism. LBRY's CEO is

Jeremy Kauffman Jeremy Kauffman (born September 19, 1984) is an American entrepreneur and political activist known for founding and leading LBRY. Kauffman is also known as a vocal supporter and activist within the Free State Project, a movement designed to ge ...

, a libertarian activist who was inspired to create LBRY to "provide people with choices for content," implicitly critical of the curated choices provided by

Company and technology

The LBRY protocol is a decentralized file-sharing and payment network built using blockchain and BitTorrent technology. It allows anyone to create an account and register content that cannot be deleted by the company. LBRY uses BitTorrent technology to serve content without relying on their own servers by using

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

file-sharing. Creators can record video content to the LBRY blockchain, as well as other digital content including music, images,

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

s, and

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...

s. The LBRY projects are open source. In October 2017, LBRY, Inc. released a media hosting site built atop the protocol called spee.ch. It stopped being supported in December 2019, in favor of LBRY, Inc.'s LBRY.tv website. Odysee, another video website built by LBRY, Inc. using their LBRY protocol, entered beta in September 2020 and officially launched that December. Odysee was split into a separate corporate entity with its own CEO on October 1, 2021. LBRY, Inc. also maintains their own cryptocurrency, "LBRY credits" (LBC), which they use as a part of a digital store they have built based on the LBRY blockchain. Using this currency, creators can charge viewers to stream their content or earn tips. Users of the platform earn LBC through using the platform and inviting others to it. On March 29, 2021, the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...

(SEC) charged LBRY, Inc. with selling unregistered digital asset securities. The SEC alleged that LBRY, Inc. had sold LBRY credits (LBC) to fund their work without registering them with the SEC as a security, a violation of securities laws. In response, LBRY's CEO began a public relations campaign to gather support among blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and to argue that the SEC had mislabeled LBC as a security. On November 7, 2022, the SEC won the lawsuit when Judge

Paul Barbadoro Paul James Barbadoro (born June 4, 1955) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire. In July 2016, he was appointed by Chief Justice Roberts as the chair of the Executive Committ ...

of the

United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire The United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire (in case citations, D.N.H.) is the federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises the state of New Hampshire. The Warren B. Rudman U.S. Courthouse for the New Hampshir ...

granted the SEC's motion for

summary judgment In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law or summary disposition) is a judgment entered by a court for one party and against another party summarily, i.e., without a full trial. Summary judgments may be issued on the merits of ...

Content and users

The LBRY platform's video sharing websites have been described as an alternative to YouTube. In 2017, LBRY, Inc. publicly archived 20,000 deleted

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

lectures from the university's YouTube channel after the

US Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...

ruled that the videos violated the Americans with Disabilities Act due to a lack of transcription. spee.ch, a media hosting site built atop the LBRY protocol, was used by groups such as

Deterrence Dispensed Deterrence Dispensed or DetDisp is a decentralized, online collective that promotes and distributes open-source 3D printed firearms, gun parts, and handloaded cartridges. The group describes itself as aligned with freedom of speech and copyleft m ...

to upload

3D printed firearm A 3D printed firearm is a firearm that is primarily produced with a 3D printer. They can be classified by the type of 3D printers used: plastic (desktop fused filament fabrication), metal (industrial selective laser melting), or both. While ...

blueprints. When LBRY, Inc. stopped supporting spee.ch in 2019 in favor of their new site, LBRY.tv, Deterrence Dispensed moved to LBRY.tv. The LBRY platform experienced a surge in popularity in late 2020 and early 2021, and LBRY, Inc. said in January 2021 that their new user sign-ups had increased to 250% from the previous month. Writing for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', Nathaniel Popper reported that many of the new users appeared to be supporters of former United States president

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

white supremacists White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...

, and gun rights advocates who were suspended from YouTube. Robert Hackett and David Z. Morris writing for '' Fortune'' attributed the increased interest in LBRY and other blockchain-based platforms to the choice by

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and other popular social networks to ban Trump and many others after the 2021 United States Capitol attack. , Odysee hosted 10million videos, the most-viewed of which was a video falsely challenging the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. A May 2021 report by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' found "scores of extremist videos" on the Odysee platform that promoted

antisemitic conspiracy theories Antisemitic tropes, canards, or myths are " sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since the Middle Ages, such rep ...

, glorified

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

and other Nazis, shared

COVID-19 misinformation False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messagin ...

, and depicted meetings and rallies by extremist groups including the white nationalist and antisemitic National Justice party and the neo-Nazi

Nordic Resistance Movement The Nordic Resistance Movement; Norwegian: nb, Nordiske motstandsbevegelsen, NMB; nn, Nordiske motstandsrørsla NMR; fi, Pohjoismainen Vastarintaliike, PVL; is, Norræna mótstöðuhreyfingin, NMH; da, Den nordiske modstandsbevægelse, ...

Megan Squire Megan Squire is a professor of computer science at Elon University. A researcher and Anti-Defamation League fellow with a focus on right-wing political extremism online, her work has been described as operating as an intermediary between non-prof ...

, a computer scientist and researcher of right-wing political extremism, described challenges faced by blockchains such as LBRY and the social networks built atop them: "As a technology it is very cool, but you can't just sit there and be a

Pollyanna ''Pollyanna'' is a 1913 novel by American author Eleanor H. Porter, considered a classic of children's literature. The book's success led to Porter's soon writing a sequel, ''Pollyanna Grows Up'' (1915). Eleven more ''Pollyanna'' sequels, know ...

and think that all information will be free ... There will be racists, and people will shoot each other. It's going to be the total package." Extremism researcher Eviane Leidig, writing for the Global Network on Extremism & Technology (GNET) at The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, described Odysee as "the new

for the far-right", and wrote that although Odysee was "not inherently a platform for far-right or extremist content creators", it had become popular among them.

Moderation

Because the LBRY network is built on a blockchain, there is no way for LBRY, Inc. to moderate at the blockchain level their users or the content that they upload. LBRY, Inc. is able to moderate content on the websites they build on top of the protocol. On LBRY's Odysee platform, guidelines prohibit content including pornography and promotion of violence or terrorism. Rule-breaking content can be delisted from Odysee, which leaves the channel and content in place and continues to allow it to be shared, but prevents it from being found via search or browsing channels. Most people access the protocol through the LBRY platform: websites including Odysee and LBRY.tv which are built on top of the LBRY blockchain. Todd Bookman writing for

New Hampshire Public Radio New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) is the National Public Radio member network serving the state of New Hampshire. NHPR is based in Concord and operates eight transmitters and six translators covering nearly the whole state, as well as portions of ...

described Odysee's approach to content moderation as "no censorship, no- deplatforming, no matter what users say." When asked in July 2019 about the use of LBRY, Inc.'s sites to host blueprints for 3D printed guns, LBRY, Inc.'s CEO Kauffman has said that he would only remove the files from his websites if courts deem them illegal. Champe Barton writing for '' The Trace'' has said Kauffman "signal dhis support" for the distribution of such blueprints by sharing them on his personal Twitter account. On May 14, 2021, ''The Guardian'' reported that LBRY executive Julian Chandra wrote to Odysee site moderators that a "Nazi that makes videos about the superiority of the white race" was not grounds for removal from Odysee. The email was accidentally sent to a user who had complained about neo-Nazi content on the platform.

Company

LBRY, Inc., which builds the LBRY protocol and the platform based upon it, was founded in May 2015 by

and Jimmy Kiselak. The company is based in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, New Hampshire. The company is affiliated with the New Hampshire Free State Project, a libertarian political migration movement willing to make

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...

a stronghold for libertarian ideas and policies. Through 2015 and 2016, Kauffman and Kiselak were joined by Mike Vine, Josh Finer, and Alex Grintsvayg, who they also described as co-founders. Kauffman, Kiselak, and Grintsvayg all attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where they played

ultimate Frisbee Ultimate, originally known as ultimate Frisbee, is a non-contact team sport played with a frisbee flung by hand. Ultimate was developed in 1968 by AJ Gator in Maplewood, New Jersey. Although ultimate resembles many traditional sports in its ath ...

together. Kauffman remains LBRY's

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

, Grintsvayg is chief technology officer, and Finer is the director of operations and analytics. Julian Chandra is the company's

chief marketing officer A chief marketing officer (CMO), also called a global marketing officer or marketing director, or chief brand officer, is a corporate executive responsible for managing marketing activities in an organization. Whilst historically these titles may ...

References

External links

* {{Video digital distribution platforms 2015 establishments in New Hampshire Alt-tech American companies established in 2015 Blockchains Companies based in Manchester, New Hampshire Cryptocurrencies Free and open-source software Internet properties established in 2015 Online marketplaces Social networking services Video hosting Websites with far-right material