Few things, everywhere, all at once: Revolutionizing Movie Streaming, Data Compression, and Society at Large (mrmcd25)

In this talk, we'll learn how to stream blockbuster movies for free, without violating copyright. We'll also blow state-of-the-art video compressions out of the water, compressing movies to 0.06% of their original file size with minimal quality loss. And while we're at it, we'll also solve long-standing systemic social injustices with simple, technical solutions. More seriously, this talk explores the fuzzy areas of copyright, plays with interesting open datasets, hacky python scripts, and pushes the boundaries of ffmpeg. We'll also discuss fascinating current research on bias and representation in movies, based on Bamman et al.'s paper on "Measuring diversity in Hollywood through the large-scale computational analysis of film". In the process, we'll create what may not be the *best*, but hopefully your new *favourite* movie streaming platform — ultra light and coyright-free by design. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://talks.mrmcd.net/2025/talk/ZWDVSE/