Democracy Player

You might have seen mention of the Democracy Player go by in my del.icio.us links feed, back when the Mozilla Foundation donated money to the Participatory Culture Foundation.

If you haven’t taken a look at the Democracy Player itself, you really should. Think of Democracy Player as an alternative to Joost : an open source, multi-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) video player and download client which can handle video podcasts / vodcasts as well as bit torrent downloads. It’s also open in terms of content, and the channels which can be made available. It is soon to be renamed to “Miro” - in anticipation of the 1.0 release.

As the project page explains, the Democracy Player is not only a better player for its users, but also better for the ecosystem of the internet:

Television is the most powerful medium in our culture, and it’s moving online. There’s a huge opportunity to hear new voices. But if video on the internet is dominated by just one or two huge video websites, we’re all in serious trouble. Openness, competition, and decentralization make the internet work. We need to ensure that online video has that same freedom.

Democracy Player keeps online video open by letting you connect to all of the big video hosting sites and thousands of independent publishers, all in one place. Don’t get locked in to one video host.