title: Bernie Sanders

text: In 2007, Sanders helped kill a bill introducing comprehensive immigration reform, arguing that its guest-worker program would depress wages for American workers. In 2010, he supported the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the United States as minors. In 2013, he supported the Gang of Eight's comprehensive immigration reform bill after securing a $1.5 billion youth jobs program provision, which he argued would offset the harm of labor market competition with immigrants.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In April 2017, Sanders introduced a bill that would raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $15 an hour, an increase over an earlier Democratic $12 an hour proposal. On May 9, 2018, he introduced the Workplace Democracy Act, a bill that would expand labor rights by making it easier for workers to join a union, ban right-to-work laws and some anti-union provisions of the Taft–Hartley Act, and outlaw some union-busting tactics. Announcing the legislation, he said, "If we are serious about reducing income and wealth inequality and rebuilding the middle class, we have got to substantially increase the number of union jobs in this country."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders opposed the 2018 United States federal budget proposed by the Trump administration, calling it "a budget for the billionaire class, for Wall Street, for corporate CEOs, and for the wealthiest people in this country ... nothing less than a massive transfer of wealth from working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor to the top 1%."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: After the November 2017 revelations from the Paradise Papers and a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies which says just three people (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett) own more wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population, Sanders stated that "we must end global oligarchy" and that "we need, in the United States and throughout the world, a tax system which is fair, progressive and transparent."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On September 5, 2018, Sanders partnered with Ro Khanna to introduce the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act, which would require large corporations to pay for the food stamps and Medicaid benefits that their employees receive, relieving the burden on taxpayers.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On June 9, 2014, Sanders sponsored the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs in the wake of the Veterans Health Administration scandal of 2014. He worked with Senator John McCain, who co-sponsored the bill. His bill was incorporated into the House version of the bill, which passed both chambers on July 31, 2014, and was signed into law by President Obama on August 7, 2014.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On March 17, 2016, Sanders said he would support Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, though he added, "there are some more progressive judges out there." He opposed Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the court, saying that Gorsuch had "refused to answer legitimate questions". He also objected to Senate Republicans using the nuclear option to "choke off debate and ram the nomination through the Senate". He voted against Gorsuch's confirmation as an associate justice.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: As an independent, Sanders worked out a deal with the Senate Democratic leadership in which he agreed to vote with the Democrats on all procedural matters unless the Democratic whip, Dick Durbin, agreed that he need not (a request rarely made or granted). In return he was allowed to keep his seniority and received the committee seats that would have been available to him as a Democrat; in 2013–14 he was chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs (during the Veterans Health Administration scandal).


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and the chair in 2021; he previously chaired the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for two years. Since 2017, he has been chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee. He appointed economics professor Stephanie Kelton, a modern monetary theory scholar, as the chief economic adviser for the committee's Democratic minority and presented a report about helping "rebuild the disappearing middle class" that included proposals to raise the minimum wage, boost infrastructure spending, and increase Social Security payments.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders was only the third senator from Vermont to caucus with the Democrats, after Jeffords and Leahy. His caucusing with the Democrats gave them a 51–49 majority in the Senate during the 110th Congress in 2007–08. The Democrats needed 51 seats to control the Senate because Vice President Dick Cheney would likely have broken any tie in favor of the Republicans. He is a member of the following caucuses:


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Polling conducted in August 2011 by Public Policy Polling found that Sanders's approval rating was 67% and his disapproval rating 28%, making him then the third-most popular U.S. senator. Both the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the NHLA (National Hispanic Leadership Agenda) have given him 100% voting scores during his tenure in the Senate. In 2015, he was named one of the Top5 of "The Forward" 50. In a November 2015 Morning Consult poll, he reached an 83% approval rating among his constituents, making him the most popular U.S. senator. Fox News found him to have the highest net favorability at +28 points of any prominent politician included in its March 2017 poll. He ranked third in 2014 and first in both 2015 and 2016.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In April 2017, a nationwide Harvard-Harris Poll found that Sanders had the highest favorability rating among all the political figures included in the poll, a standing confirmed by subsequent polling.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: During the 2012 Democratic presidential primaries, Sanders—dissatisfied with President Obama's "attempts to trade Social Security cuts for tax hikes"—reportedly considered running against him in the primaries. Sanders had previously suggested in 2011 that it was "a good idea" for someone to challenge Obama, and "got so close to running a primary challenge ... that Senator Harry Reid had to intervene to stop him." In November 2013, Sanders suggested that Senator Elizabeth Warren could be president and that she might earn his backing if she ran. He added that if no progressive candidate ran, he might feel compelled to do so himself. In December 2014, Warren said she was not running.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders announced his intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for president on April 30, 2015. His campaign was officially launched on May 26 in Burlington. In his announcement Sanders said, "I don't believe that the men and women who defended American democracy fought to create a situation where billionaires own the political process", and made this a central idea throughout his campaign.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Warren welcomed Sanders's entry into the race, saying, "I'm glad to see him get out there and give his version of what leadership in this country should be", but never endorsed him.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Initially considered a long shot, Sanders won 23 primaries and caucuses and around 46% of pledged delegates to Hillary Clinton's 54%. His campaign was noted for its supporters' enthusiasm, as well as for rejecting large donations from corporations, the financial industry, and any associated Super PAC. Some of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails leaked to the public in June and July 2016 showed that the committee leadership had favored Clinton over him and had worked to help Clinton win the nomination.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On July 12, 2016, Sanders formally endorsed Clinton in her unsuccessful general election campaign against Republican Donald Trump, while urging his supporters to continue the "political revolution" his campaign had begun.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Unlike the other major candidates, Sanders did not pursue funding through a Super PAC or by wealthy donors, instead focusing on small-dollar donations. His presidential campaign raised $1.5 million within 24 hours of his official announcement. At the end of the year, the campaign had raised a total of $73 million from more than one million people, making 2.5 million donations, with an average donation of $27.16. The campaign reached 3.25 million donations by the end of January 2016, raising $20 million in that month alone.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders used social media to help his campaign gain momentum, posting content to online platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and answering questions on Reddit. He gained a large grassroots organizational following online. A July 29, 2015, meetup organized online brought 100,000 supporters to more than 3,500 simultaneous events nationwide.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: To his surprise, Sanders's June 2015 campaign events drew overflow crowds across the country. When Clinton and Sanders made public appearances within days of each other in Des Moines, Iowa, he drew larger crowds, even though he had already made many stops around the state and Clinton's visit was her first in 2015. On July 1, 2015, his campaign stop in Madison, Wisconsin, drew the largest crowd of any 2016 presidential candidate to that date, with an estimated turnout of 10,000. Over the following weeks, he drew even larger crowds: 11,000 in Phoenix; 15,000 in Seattle; and 28,000 in Portland, Oregon.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced in May 2015 that there would be six debates. Critics alleged that the small number of debates and the schedule, with half of the debates on Saturday or Sunday nights, were part of the DNC's deliberate attempt to protect Clinton, who was perceived as the front-runner. In February 2016, both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns agreed in principle to holding four more debates for a total of ten. Clinton dropped out of the tenth debate, scheduled to take place just before the California primary, citing a need to devote her time to making direct contact with California voters and preparing for the general election. Sanders expressed disappointment that Clinton canceled the debate before what he believed would be "the largest and most important primary in the presidential nominating process."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Some supporters raised concerns that publications such as "The New York Times" minimized coverage of the Sanders campaign in favor of other candidates, especially Trump and Clinton. The "Times" ombudsman reviewed her paper's coverage of the Sanders campaign and found that the "Times" "hasn't always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of that is focused on the candidate's age, appearance and style, rather than what he has to say." She also found that the "Times" coverage of Sanders's campaign was much scanter than its coverage of Trump's, though Trump's was also initially considered a long shot at that time, with 63 articles covering the Trump campaign and 14 covering Sanders's. A December 2015 report found that the three major networks—CBS, NBC, and ABC—had spent 234 minutes reporting on Trump and 10 minutes on Sanders, despite their similar polling results. The report noted that "ABC World News Tonight" had spent 81 minutes on Trump and less than one minute on Sanders during 2015.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: A study of media coverage in the 2016 election concluded that while Sanders received less coverage than his rival Hillary Clinton, the amount of coverage of Sanders during the election was largely consistent with his polling performance, except during 2015 when Sanders received coverage that far exceeded his standing in the polls. Studies concluded that the tone of media coverage of Sanders was more favorable than that of any other candidate, whereas his main opponent in the democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, received the most negative coverage of any candidate. All 2016 candidates received vastly less media coverage than Donald Trump, and the Democratic primary received substantially less coverage than the Republican primary.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" noted that on March 15, Super Tuesday III, the speeches of Trump, Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz were broadcast in full. Sanders was in Phoenix, Arizona, on that date, speaking to a rally larger than any of the others, yet his speech was not mentioned, let alone broadcast. However, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer wrote in her 2018 book about the 2016 election that the Democratic primary was effectively over in terms of delegate count by mid-March 2016, but that the media promoted the narrative that the contest between Sanders and Clinton was "heating up" at that time.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: An NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll conducted in May 2016 found Clinton and Trump (by then the presumptive Republican nominee) in a "dead heat", but the same poll found that if Sanders were the Democratic nominee, 53% of voters would support him to 39% for Trump. Clinton and Trump were the least popular likely candidates ever polled, while Sanders received a 43% positive, 36% negative rating. Polls showed that Democratic voters older than 50 preferred Clinton by a large margin but that those under 50 overwhelmingly favored Sanders. A 2017 analysis in "Newsweek" found that 12% of those who voted for Sanders in the Democratic primary voted for Trump in the general election, a lower proportion than that of Clinton supporters in 2008 who voted for John McCain.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In July 2016, a leak of the Democratic National Committee's emails appeared to show DNC officials favoring Clinton over Sanders. Staff repeatedly discussed making his irreligious tendencies a potential campaign issue in southern states and questioned his party loyalty. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz called his campaign manager "an "ass"" and "a damn liar". Speaking with Jake Tapper on CNN, Sanders responded to the leak, saying, "it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying: the function of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates—to be fair and even-minded. But again, we discussed this many, many months ago, on this show, so what is revealed now is not a shock to me."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: After the final primary election, Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee. On July 12, Sanders formally endorsed Clinton. He said he would continue to work with the Democratic National Convention organizers to implement progressive positions. Sanders refused to formally concede before the convention. He spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention on July 25, during which he gave Clinton his full support. Some of his supporters attempted to protest Clinton's nomination and booed when Sanders called for party unity. He responded, "Our job is to do two things: to defeat Donald Trump and to elect Hillary Clinton... It is easy to boo, but it is harder to look your kids in the face if we are living under a Trump presidency."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On November 8, in the general election, Sanders received almost 6% of the vote in Vermont, even though he was no longer a candidate. This was the highest share of a statewide presidential vote for a write-in draft campaign in American history. He also received more votes in Vermont than Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and Jill Stein, the Green candidate, combined. It was possible to vote for Sanders as a write-in candidate in 12 states, and exact totals of write-in votes for him were published in three of them: California, New Hampshire, and Vermont. In those three states, he received 111,850 write-in votes, about 15% of the write-in votes nationwide, and less than 1% of total nationwide vote.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In November 2016, Sanders's book "" was released; upon its release, it was number three on "The New York Times" Best Seller list. The audiobook later received a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album. In February 2017, he began webcasting "The Bernie Sanders Show" on Facebook live streaming. , guests had included William Barber, Josh Fox, Jane Mayer, and Bill Nye. Polls taken in 2017 found him to be the most popular politician in the United States.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In February 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections concluded that Russians had communicated false information during the primary campaigns to help Sanders and Stein and harm Clinton. Sanders rejected the investigation's conclusion, saying that he had seen no evidence that Russians had helped his campaign. Furthermore, he blamed the Clinton campaign for not doing more to prevent Russian interference. He later said that his campaign had taken action to prevent Russian meddling in the election and that a campaign staffer had alerted the Clinton campaign. "Politico" noted that a Sanders campaign volunteer contacted a political action committee (PAC) that supported the Clinton campaign to report suspicious activities but that the Sanders campaign did not contact the Clinton campaign as such.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In November 2018, the Sanders Institute and Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25, launched Progressive International, an international organization uniting progressive activists and organizations "to mobilize people around the world to transform the global order and the institutions that shape it."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Analysts have suggested that Sanders's campaign shifted both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party politically leftward. A new political organization, Brand New Congress, was formed in April 2016 by former campaign staffers. It works to elect congressional representatives with platforms in line with Sanders. In August 2016, he formed Our Revolution, a political organization dedicated to educating voters about issues, getting people involved in the political process, and electing progressive candidates for local, state, and national office. Speaking on the PBS Newshour about the upcoming 2018 elections and discussing the main principles of the two major parties, Susan Page described the Republican Party as "Trump's party" and the Democratic Party as "Bernie Sanders's party", saying that "Sanders and his more progressive stance has really taken hold." Noting the increasing acceptance of his national single-payer health-care program, his $15-an-hour minimum wage stance, free college tuition and many of the other campaign platform issues he introduced, an April 2018 opinion article in "The Week" suggested, "Quietly but steadily, the Democratic Party is admitting that Sanders was right." In July 2016, a "Slate" article called the Democratic platform draft "a monument to his campaign", noting not only his call for a $15 minimum wage, but other campaign issues, such as Social Security expansion, a carbon tax, Wall Street reform, opposition to the death penalty, and a "reasoned pathway for future legalization" of marijuana.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders's presidential campaigns led to a resurgence of interest in social democracy and democratic socialism among millenials.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On February 19, 2019, Sanders announced that he would seek the Democratic Party's 2020 nomination for president. He had declined the Vermont Democratic Party nomination for U.S. Senate in 2006, 2012, and 2018, which caused an unsuccessful legal challenge to his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Along with his 2019 campaign announcement, he said he would abide by a new Democratic Party rule for presidential candidates and that he would affirm his membership in that party. On March 5, 2019, he signed a formal statement, known as a "loyalty pledge", that he is a member of the Democratic Party and will serve as a Democrat if elected. News reports noted that the day before, he had signed paperwork to run as an independent for reelection to his Senate seat in 2024.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders's campaign manager was Faiz Shakir. The campaign's national co-chairs were Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen, Representative Ro Khanna, Our Revolution President Nina Turner, and San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Given the high national profile that Sanders maintained since his 2016 campaign, NPR described him as "no longer an underdog" when he announced his 2020 campaign. Using the large email list it built during the 2016 campaign, the 2020 campaign recruited more than one million volunteers within weeks of its launch. It enlisted several former NowThis News employees to produce professional videos for wide social media distribution, live-streamed various forums to its millions of social media followers, and launched a podcast and smartphone app for grassroots organizing.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders's 2020 campaign employed many of the same methods as its 2016 counterpart, eschewing a Super PAC and relying predominantly on small-dollar contributions. According to Federal Election Commission filings, the Sanders campaign had raised the most money in the 2020 Democratic field as of June 2019, including money left over from his 2018 Senate and 2016 presidential races. In September 2019, the Sanders campaign became the fastest in U.S. history to reach one million donors. On October 1, 2019, the campaign announced it had raised $25.3 million in the year's third quarter, with an average donation of $18. It was the largest quarterly sum raised by any Democratic candidate. The campaign raised $34.5 million during the fourth quarter of 2019.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders steadily polled between 15 and 20% on most national surveys between May and September 2019, according to the RealClearPolitics average. This placed him in a decisive second-place behind Joe Biden until Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris caught up in July. From mid-February 2020 to the start of March, Sanders polled in first place in the Democratic primary ahead of Joe Biden and was described by the press as the party's presidential front-runner.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: According to a RealClearPolitics analysis, Sanders received the third-most mentions on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC between January and August 2019, trailing only Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden, however, received twice as many mentions as Sanders and Harris. Mentions of Sanders on "ABC World News Tonight" found him in second place, though also trailing Biden by a large margin. Online mentions "reflect a slightly more balanced picture", with both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren running "neck-and-neck" with Biden.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On April 6, 2019, Sanders participated in a Fox News town hall that attracted more than 2.55 million viewers. His decision to appear on Fox was controversial given the Democratic National Committee's decision not to allow Fox to host any of its debates. His appearance saw an increase of Fox News viewers by 24% overall and 40% in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic, surpassing the ratings of all other Democratic presidential candidate town halls that year. As of September 2019, the town hall had received more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On August 6, Sanders appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast. Some praised Rogan for "hosting a pragmatic discussion" while others "seemed rather stunned by Sanders's decision to appear on the show at all." After the podcast, Rogan became a top-trending Twitter topic. After interviewing him, Rogan said, "I am not right-wing ... I've interviewed right-wing people. I am 100% left-wing ... Bernie Sanders made a ton of sense to me and I would 100% vote for him." As of October 2019, the podcast had received more than ten million views on YouTube.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In December 2018, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced the preliminary schedule for 12 official DNC-sanctioned debates, set to begin in June 2019, with six in 2019 and the remaining six during the first four months of 2020. During the July and September debates, commentators described Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as having a "non-aggression pact", staking out similar progressive positions in contrast to the more conservative candidates. In the October 15 debate, his first appearance since his heart attack, debate coach Todd Graham gave Sanders's performance an A, his highest rating of all the candidates.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: CNN hosted the first 2020 debate in January with six candidates remaining. Co-moderator Abby Phillip questioned Sanders and Warren about an allegation Warren had made that he had privately told her that a woman could not defeat Donald Trump. Phillip asked Sanders, "Senator Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Senator Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018 you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?" Ignoring Sanders's strong denial, Phillip asked Warren, "What did you think when Bernie Sanders told you that a woman couldn't become president?" In an interview after the debate, Sanders called it ludicrous to believe that he would doubt a woman's ability to win the presidency and noted that a woman already "had" won the national popular vote, saying, "After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders announced that he was suspending his campaign on April 8, 2020. He stated that he would remain on the ballot in the remaining states and continue to accumulate delegates with the goal of influencing the Democratic Party's platform. On April 14 Sanders endorsed Biden. Biden responded, "I think that your endorsement means a great deal. It means a great deal to me. I think people are going to be surprised that we are apart on some issues but we're awfully close on a whole bunch of others. I'm going to need you—not just to win the campaign, but to govern."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: A self-described "democratic socialist", Sanders is a progressive who admires the Nordic model of social democracy and has been a proponent of workplace democracy. He advocates for universal and single-payer healthcare, paid parental leave, as well as tuition-free tertiary education. He supports lowering the cost of drugs by reforming patent laws to allow cheaper generic versions to be sold in the U.S. He supported the Affordable Care Act, though he said it did not go far enough. In November 2015, he gave a speech at Georgetown University about his view of democratic socialism, including its place in the policies of presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. Defining what "democratic socialism" means to him, Sanders said: "I don't believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here, rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Based on his positions and votes throughout his career, many commentators consider his political platform based on tax-funded social benefits and not on social ownership of the means of production. Some have described Sanders's political philosophy as "welfarism" or "social democracy" but not "democratic socialism" defined as "an attempt to create a property-free, socialist society." Some members of various U.S. socialist parties and organizations have said that Sanders is a reformer of capitalism, not a socialist. Others distinguish among "socialism", "social democracy", and "democratic socialism", and describe his philosophy as extending from such existing liberal programs in the U.S. as Social Security and Medicare, and more consistent with the social democracy found in much of Europe, especially the Nordic countries. Noam Chomsky and Thomas Frank have described Sanders as "a New Dealer". Other observers, such as Lane Kenworthy and Bhaskar Sunkara, suggest that his views are more closely related to those of social democrats.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sunkara has characterized Sanders's politics as "class struggle social democracy", arguing that while postwar social democracy operated as a compromise that instituted tripartite arrangements between business, labor and government to dampen class conflict, Sanders sees social democratic demands as a means to sharpening class confrontation and raising class consciousness. His views have been echoed by George Eaton, arguing that Sunkara's phrase "captures the nuances of Sanders' politics in a way that a socialist / social democrat binary does not" and asserting that if he was elected president it would represent "the triumph of a politics that is neither wholly socialist, nor social democratic, but a new fusion of both".


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders views global warming as a serious problem, and advocates bold action to reverse its effects. He calls for substantial investment in infrastructure, with energy efficiency, sustainability, and job creation as prominent goals. He considers climate change the greatest threat to national security. He said that family planning can help fight climate change. He opposed the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on the grounds that, like the Keystone XL Pipeline, it "will have a significant impact on our climate." In 2019, he announced his support for Green New Deal legislation, and joined Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Earl Blumenauer in proposing legislation that would declare climate change a national and international emergency.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders focuses on economic issues such as income and wealth inequality, poverty, raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, cancelling all student debt, making public colleges and universities tuition-free by taxing financial transactions, and expanding Social Security benefits by eliminating the cap on the payroll tax on all incomes above $250,000. He has become a prominent supporter of laws requiring companies to give their workers parental leave, sick leave, and vacation time, noting that such laws have been adopted by nearly all other developed countries. He also supports legislation that would make it easier for workers to join or form a trade union. He was against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and has called for comprehensive financial reforms, such as breaking up "too big to fail" financial institutions, restoring Glass–Steagall legislation, reforming the Federal Reserve Bank, and allowing the Post Office to offer basic financial services in economically marginalized communities.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Believing greater emphasis is needed on labor rights and environmental concerns when negotiating international trade agreements, Sanders voted against and has long spoken against NAFTA, CAFTA, and PNTR with China. He has called them a "disaster for the American worker", saying that they have resulted in American corporations moving abroad. He also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he says was "written by corporate America and the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street." On May 1, 2019, he tweeted: "Since the China trade deal I voted against, America has lost over three million manufacturing jobs. It's wrong to pretend that China isn't one of our major economic competitors."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders also strongly opposes outsourcing American jobs. During discussions of the United States Innovation and Competition Act, which was to be used to fund the manufacture of semiconductors amid a shortage, he proposed a measure to ensure the companies the bill funded could not outsource their jobs. The proposed measure would also block the companies from forbidding their employees to unionize. Sanders's proposal was voted down by most Democrats and all Republicans in the Senate. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, Sanders said he wants the Democratic Party to focus more on supporting unionization: "I think we should move to a system where, if 50% of the workers in a bargaining unit plus one vote to form a union, they have a union. End of discussion."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders supports reducing military spending while pursuing more diplomacy and international cooperation. He opposed funding Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras, in the CIA's covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government. He opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has criticized a number of policies instituted during the War on Terror, particularly that of mass surveillance and the USA Patriot Act. He criticized Israel's actions during the 2014 Gaza war and U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. On November 15, 2015, in response to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)'s attacks in Paris, he cautioned against Islamophobia and said, "We gotta be tough, not stupid" in the war against ISIL, adding that the U.S. should continue to welcome Syrian refugees. He criticized the January 2020 drone assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, calling it a dangerous escalation of tensions that could lead to an expensive war.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders supports Palestinian rights and has criticized Israel on several occasions. In 2020, he called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a platform for bigotry and said he would not attend its conference. He condemned Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying, "It would dramatically undermine the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and severely, perhaps irreparably, damage the United States' ability to broker that peace."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Addressing Westminster College in a September 2017 speech, Sanders laid out a foreign policy plan for greater international collaboration, adherence to U.S.-led international agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal framework, and promoting human rights and democratic ideals. He emphasized the consequences associated with global economic inequality and climate change, and urged reining in the use of U.S. military power, saying it "must always be a last resort". He also criticized U.S. support for "murderous regimes" during the Cold War, such as those in Iran, Chile and El Salvador, and said that those actions continue to make the U.S. less safe. He also spoke critically of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and the way President Trump has handled the crisis. He does not consider Turkey a U.S. ally, and condemned the Turkish military offensive against U.S.-aligned Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders supports closing the "gun show loophole", banning assault weapons, and passing and enforcing universal federal background checks for gun purchases. In 1990, he was supported by the National Rifle Association in his bid to become a U.S. Representative in exchange for opposing both the competing campaign of Peter Smith, who had reversed his stance on firearm restrictions, and waiting periods for handgun purchases. In 1993, while a U.S. Representative, he voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (which established background checks and wait periods), and in 2005 voted for legislation that gave gun manufacturers legal immunity against claims of negligence, but he has since said that he would support repealing that law. In 1996, he voted against additional funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for research on issues related to firearms, but in 2016, he called for an increase in CDC funding for the study of gun violence.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On social issues, Sanders has long taken liberal stances. He considers himself a feminist, is pro-choice on abortion, and opposes defunding Planned Parenthood. He has denounced institutional racism and called for criminal justice reform to reduce the number of people in prison, advocates a crackdown on police brutality, and supports abolishing private, for-profit prisons and the death penalty. He supports Black Lives Matter. He also supports legalizing marijuana at the federal level. He has advocated for greater democratic participation by citizens, campaign finance reform, and a constitutional amendment or judicial decision that would overturn "Citizens United v. FEC".


title: Bernie Sanders

text: He advocated for LGBT rights as Burlington mayor in 1983 and voted against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. In 2006, he indicated that the time was not right for legalizing same-sex marriage nationally, describing the issue as one that should be handled at the state level; but then in 2009, he supported the legalizing same-sex marriage in Vermont, which was enacted that year. In 2014, he signed a letter to then-FDA commissioner Sylvia Burwell requesting that the FDA revise its policy banning donation of corneas and other tissues by men who have had sex with another man in the preceding 5 years.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders criticized President Trump for appointing multiple billionaires to his cabinet. He criticized Trump's rolling back President Obama's Clean Power Plan, noting the scientifically reported effect on climate change of human activity and citing Trump's calling those reports a hoax. He called for caution on the Syrian Civil War, saying, "It's easier to get into a war than out of one." In 2017, he promised to defeat "Trump and Trumpism and the Republican right-wing ideology".


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders gave an online reply to Trump's January 2018 State of the Union address in which he called Trump "compulsively dishonest" and criticized him for initiating "a looming immigration crisis" by ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He voiced concern about Trump's failure to mention the finding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and "will likely interfere in the 2018 midterms we will be holding ... Unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol. Sanders commented: "[Trump] has made it clear that he will do anything to remain in power – including insurrection and inciting violence [and he] will go down in history as the worst and most dangerous president in history."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders voted to convict Trump on both articles of his first impeachment trial in 2020 (for pressuring a foreign leader to investigate Joe Biden), and again on the sole article of his second impeachment trial in 2021 (for inciting the storming of the Capitol).


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders influenced the environmental policy goals of the Biden administration as described before Biden's nomination. Biden's policy team took some but not all of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces' climate recommendations.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: After Biden was elected president, Sanders became the subject of speculation over a potential appointment as Labor Secretary, which was supported by several progressive groups, such as the Sunrise Movement. For his part, Sanders said that he would accept Biden's nomination if it was offered, but Boston mayor Marty Walsh was chosen for the position instead. When announcing Walsh's nomination, Biden confirmed that he had discussed the position with Sanders, but the two agreed that Sanders's resignation from the Senate and the ensuing special election would have put the Democrats' slim Senate majority at risk.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On February 23, 2021, Sanders became the first senator in the Democratic caucus to oppose one of Biden's cabinet picks when he voted against Tom Vilsack's confirmation as Agriculture Secretary, citing concerns about Vilsack's past work as a lobbyist and ties to large corporations.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders strongly supported Senate Democrats' decision to use budget reconciliation, a procedure used to avoid filibusters, to pass the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, despite having criticized Republicans' use of reconciliation to pass the 2017 tax cuts. The bill passed the Senate by a 50–49 vote and was signed into law by Biden on March 11, 2021.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders has continued to have a strong influence on the Biden administration. When it was noted that he had become a key voice in Biden's administration, he replied, "As somebody who wrote a book called "Outsider in the House", yes, it is a strange experience to be having that kind of influence that we have now." Their relationship has lasted over 30 years and Sanders has said it is based on respect and trust: "We have had a good relationship. He wants to be a champion of working families, and I admire that and respect that."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Before the 2022 midterm election, Sanders said he regarded it as deciding the fate of democracy, abortion, and climate change, calling it "the most consequential midterm election" of modern U.S. history. He expressed a fear that the Democratic Party had "not done a good enough job" of getting its message out "to young people and working-class people." After the election, Sanders said it "went a hell of a lot better than we had anticipated" and that "discussion about the economy" had "a very strong impact" that helped Democrats. He also pointed to John Fetterman's successful campaign as a model for future Democratic efforts, saying that Fetterman had "strongly identified with the working class" during the Pennsylvania election.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Born into a Democratic-voting family, Sanders was first introduced to political activism when his brother Larry joined the Young Democrats of America and campaigned for Adlai Stevenson II in 1956. Sanders joined Vermont's Liberty Union Party in 1971 and was a candidate for several offices, never coming close to winning election. He became party chairman, but quit in 1977 to become an independent. In 1980, he served as an elector for the Socialist Workers Party. In 1981, Sanders ran as an independent for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and defeated the Democratic incumbent; he was reelected three times. Although an independent, he endorsed Democratic presidential candidates Walter Mondale in 1984 and Jesse Jackson in 1988. His endorsement of Mondale was lukewarm (telling reporters that "if you go around saying that Mondale would be a great president, you would be a liar and a hypocrite"), but he supported Jackson enthusiastically. "The Washington Post" reported that the Jackson campaign helped inspire Sanders to work more closely with the Democratic Party.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders first ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988 and for the U.S. Senate in 2006, each time adopting a strategy of winning the Democratic Party primary, thereby eliminating Democratic challengers, and then running as an independent in the general election. He continued this strategy through his reelection in the 2018 United States Senate election in Vermont. Throughout his tenure in Congress, he has been listed as an independent. He caucused with Democrats in the House while refusing to join the party, and continues to caucus with Democrats in the Senate. Some conservative southern House Democrats initially barred him from the caucus as they believed that allowing a self-described socialist to join would harm their electoral prospects. He soon came to work constructively with Democrats, voting with the party over 90% of the time during his tenure in Congress.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Starting with his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders's announcements suggested that not only was he running as a Democrat, but that he would run as a Democrat in future elections. When challenged by Clinton about his party commitment, he said, "Of course I am a Democrat and running for the Democratic nomination." Since he remained a senator elected as an independent, his U.S. Senate website and press materials continued to refer to him as an independent during the campaign and upon his return to the Senate. In October 2017, Sanders said he would run for reelection as an independent in 2018 despite pressure to run as a Democrat. His party status became ambiguous again in March 2019 when he signed a formal "loyalty pledge" to the Democratic Party stating that he was a member of the party and would serve as a Democrat if elected president. He signed the pledge the day after he signed paperwork to run as an independent for reelection to the Senate in 2024.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: After Trump's victory in the 2016 elections, Sanders suggested the Democratic Party undergo a series of reforms and that it "break loose from its corporate establishment ties and, once again, become a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor." He drew parallels between his campaign and that of the Labour Party in the 2017 UK general election. He wrote in "The New York Times" that "the British elections should be a lesson for the Democratic Party" and urged the Democrats to stop holding on to an "overly cautious, centrist ideology", arguing that "momentum shifted to Labour after it released a very progressive manifesto that generated much enthusiasm among young people and workers." He had earlier praised Jeremy Corbyn's stance on class issues. Sanders is one of three independents in the Senate, the others being Angus King, who also caucuses with the Democrats, and Kyrsten Sinema.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In 1963, Sanders and Deborah Shiling Messing, whom he met in college, volunteered for several months on the Israeli kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim. They married in 1964 and bought a summer home in Vermont; they had no children and divorced in 1966. His son (and only biological child), Levi Sanders, was born in 1969 to then-girlfriend Susan Campbell Mott.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On May 28, 1988, Sanders married Jane O'Meara Driscoll (), who later became president of Burlington College, in Burlington, Vermont. The day after their wedding, the couple visited the Soviet Union as part of an official delegation in his capacity as mayor. They own a row house in Capitol Hill, a house in Burlington's New North End neighborhood, and a lakefront summer home in North Hero. He considers Jane's three children—Dave Driscoll (born 1975), Carina Driscoll (born 1974), and Heather Titus (; 1971)—to be his own. He also has seven grandchildren, three (including one who was adopted) through his son Levi and four through his stepchildren.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders's elder brother, Larry, lives in England; he was a Green Party county councillor, representing the East Oxford division on Oxfordshire County Council, until he retired from the council in 2013. Larry ran as a Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon in the 2015 British general election and came in fifth. Bernie Sanders told CNN, "I owe my brother an enormous amount. It was my brother who actually introduced me to a lot of my ideas."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On October 1, 2019, Sanders was hospitalized after experiencing chest pains at a campaign event in Las Vegas. His campaign announced the next day that a blockage had been found in one coronary artery and two stents inserted. Scheduled campaign events and appearances were canceled until further notice. Two days later his campaign released a statement that he had been diagnosed with a heart attack. He was released from the hospital the same day. The statement included the following from Sanders's doctors:


title: Bernie Sanders

text: A few days after returning home, Sanders addressed media outside his home and said he had experienced fatigue and chest discomfort for a month or two before the incident; he expressed regret for not seeking medical assessment sooner: "I was dumb."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders made his first national appearance after his heart attack on October 15 at the Democratic debate, at which he said, "I'm healthy, I'm feeling great." When asked how he would reassure voters about his health and ability to take on the duties of the presidency, he said, "We are going to be mounting a vigorous campaign all over this country. That is how I think I can reassure the American people." It was noted that he was "lively and sharp at the debate."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In December 2019, three months after the heart attack, Sanders released letters from three physicians, Attending Physician of Congress Brian P. Monahan and two cardiologists, who declared Sanders healthy and recovered from his heart condition.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On December 4, 2015, Sanders won "Time"s 2015 Person of the Year readers' poll with 10.2% of the vote but did not receive the editorial board's award. On March 20, 2016, he was given an honorary Coast Salish name, , by Deborah Parker in Seattle to honor his focus on Native American issues during his presidential campaign.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: On May 30, 2017, Sanders received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Brooklyn College.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: As Sanders described his upbringing as an American Jew in a 2016 speech: his father generally attended synagogue only on Yom Kippur; he attended public schools while his mother "chafed" at his yeshiva Sunday schooling at a Hebrew school; and their religious observances were mostly limited to Passover seders with their neighbors. Larry Sanders said of their parents, "They were very pleased to be Jews, but didn't have a strong belief in God." Bernie had a bar mitzvah at the historic Kingsway Jewish Center in Midwood, Brooklyn, where he grew up.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In 1963, in cooperation with the Labor Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, Sanders and his first wife volunteered at Sha'ar HaAmakim, a kibbutz in northern Israel. His motivation for the trip was as much socialistic as it was Zionistic.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: As mayor of Burlington, Sanders allowed a Chabad public menorah to be placed at city hall, an action the ACLU contested. He publicly inaugurated the Hanukkah menorah and performed the Jewish religious ritual of blessing Hanukkah candles. His early and strong support played a significant role in the now widespread public menorah celebrations around the globe. When asked about his Jewish heritage, Sanders has said that he is "proud to be Jewish."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders rarely speaks about religion. He describes himself as "not particularly religious" and "not actively involved" with organized religion. A press package issued by his office states his religion as Jewish. He has said he believes in God, but not necessarily in a traditional way: "I think everyone believes in God in their own ways", he said. "To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together." In October 2015, on the late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", Kimmel asked him, "You say you are culturally Jewish and you don't feel religious; do you believe in God and do you think that's important to the people of the United States?" Sanders replied:


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In 2016, he disclosed that he had "very strong religious and spiritual feelings", adding, "My spirituality is that we are all in this together and that when children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, it impacts me."


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders does not regularly attend synagogue, and he does not refrain from working on Rosh Hashanah, as observant Jews do. He has attended yahrzeit observances in memory of the deceased, for the father of a friend, and in 2015 attended a Tashlikh, an atonement ceremony, with the mayor of Lynchburg on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah. According to Richard Sugarman, his Jewish identity is "certainly more ethnic and cultural than religious." His wife is Roman Catholic, and he has often expressed admiration for Pope Francis, saying that "the leader of the Catholic Church is raising profound issues. It is important that we listen to what he has said." He has said he feels very close to Francis's economic teachings, describing him as "incredibly smart and brave". In April 2016, he accepted an invitation from Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, an aide close to Francis, to speak at a Vatican conference on economic and environmental issues. While at the Vatican, he met briefly with Francis.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In December 1987, during his tenure as mayor of Burlington, Sanders recorded a folk album, "We Shall Overcome", with 30 Vermont musicians. As he was not a skilled singer, he performed his vocals in a talking blues style.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Owing to his two high-profile campaigns in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, Sanders and his campaigns have generated many Internet memes and other online content. The Facebook group Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash, where users can submit memes focused around Sanders, received significant attention in the 2016 primary season due to the at-the-time unique idea of a meme community focused entirely on a politician. During the 2020 primary season, a still from a fundraising video in which Sanders tells the viewers "I am once again asking for your financial support" went viral online, with numerous edits made of the frame. The day before Super Tuesday 2020, a video of the Twitch streamer Neekolul wearing a Bernie 2020 shirt and lip-syncing the song "Oki Doki Boomer" also went viral. In 2021, a frame from the inauguration of Joe Biden showing Sanders seated in a folding chair wearing patterned mittens and a jacket reminiscent of the one in the "I am once again asking" meme went viral, with the image captioned or edited into other images, most commonly popular movie scenes.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: Sanders appeared in a cameo role in the 1988 comedy-drama film "Sweet Hearts Dance", playing a man who distributes candy to young trick-or-treaters. In 1999, he acted in the film "My X-Girlfriend's Wedding Reception", playing Rabbi Manny Shevitz. In this role he mourned the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles, reflecting Sanders's own upbringing in Brooklyn. On February 6, 2016, he was a guest star alongside Larry David on "Saturday Night Live", playing a Polish immigrant on a steamship that was sinking near the Statue of Liberty.


title: Bernie Sanders

text: In the DC Extended Universe film "Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)", one of the reasons Roman Sionis wants Harley Quinn dead is that she "voted for Bernie".


title: Streaming media

text: Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. "Streaming" refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content itself.


title: Streaming media

text: Distinguishing delivery method from the media applies specifically to telecommunications networks, as most of the traditional media delivery systems are either inherently "streaming" (e.g. radio, television) or inherently "non-streaming" (e.g. books, videotape, audio CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or poor buffering of the content, and users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content. With the use of buffering of the content for just a few seconds in advance of playback, the quality can be much improved.


title: Streaming media

text: Livestreaming is the real-time delivery of content during production, much as live television broadcasts content via television channels. Livestreaming requires a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content.


title: Streaming media

text: Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio content before the entire file has been transmitted. The term "streaming media" can apply to media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered "streaming text".


title: Streaming media

text: Streaming is most prevalent in video on demand and streaming television services. Other services stream music or video games.


title: Streaming media

text: The term "streaming" was first used for tape drives manufactured by Data Electronics Inc. that were meant to slowly ramp up and run for the entire track; slower ramp times lowered drive costs. "Streaming" was applied in the early 1990s as a better description for video on demand and later live video on IP networks. It was first done by Starlight Networks for video streaming and Real Networks for audio streaming. Such video had previously been referred to by the misnomer "store and forward video."


title: Streaming media

text: Beginning in 1881, Théâtrophone enabled subscribers to listen to opera and theatre performances over telephone lines. This operated until 1932. The concept of media streaming eventually came to America.


title: Streaming media

text: In the early 1920s, George Owen Squier was granted patents for a system for the transmission and distribution of signals over electrical lines, which was the technical basis for what later became "Muzak", a technology streaming continuous music to commercial customers without the use of radio.


title: Streaming media

text: The Telephone Music Service, a live jukebox service, began in 1929 and continued until 1997. The clientele eventually included 120 bars and restaurants in the Pittsburgh area. A tavern customer would deposit money in the jukebox, use a telephone on top of the jukebox, and ask the operator to play a song. The operator would find the record in the studio library of more than 100,000 records, put it on a turntable, and the music would be piped over the telephone line to play in the tavern. The music media began as 78s, 33s and 45s, played on the six turntables they monitored. CDs and tapes were incorporated in later years.


title: Streaming media

text: The business had a succession of owners, notably Bill Purse, his daughter Helen Reutzel, and finally, Dotti White. The revenue stream of each quarter was split 60% to the music service and 40% to the tavern owner. This business model eventually became unsustainable due to city permits and the cost of setting up these telephone lines.


title: Streaming media

text: Attempts to display media on computers date back to the earliest days of computing in the mid-20th century. However, little progress was made for several decades, primarily due to the high cost and limited capabilities of computer hardware. From the late 1980s through the 1990s, consumer-grade personal computers became powerful enough to display various media. The primary technical issues related to streaming were having enough CPU and bus bandwidth to support the required data rates, achieving real-time computing performance required to prevent buffer underrun and enable smooth streaming of the content. However, computer networks were still limited in the mid-1990s, and audio and video media were usually delivered over non-streaming channels, such as playback from a local hard disk drive or CD-ROMs on the end user's computer.


title: Streaming media

text: In 1990 the first commercial Ethernet switch was introduced by Kalpana, which enabled the more powerful computer networks that led to the first streaming video solutions used by schools and corporations.


title: Streaming media

text: Practical streaming media was only made possible with advances in data compression, due to the impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed media. Raw digital audio encoded with pulse-code modulation (PCM) requires a bandwidth of 1.4Mbit/s for uncompressed CD audio, while raw digital video requires a bandwidth of 168Mbit/s for SD video and over 1000Mbit/s for FHD video.


title: Streaming media

text: During the late 1990s and early 2000s, users had increased access to computer networks, especially the Internet. During the early 2000s, users had access to increased network bandwidth, especially in the last mile. These technological improvements facilitated the streaming of audio and video content to computer users in their homes and workplaces. There was also an increasing use of standard protocols and formats, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML as the Internet became increasingly commercialized, which led to an infusion of investment into the sector.


title: Streaming media

text: The band Severe Tire Damage was the first group to perform live on the Internet. On June 24, 1993, the band was playing a gig at Xerox PARC while elsewhere in the building, scientists were discussing new technology (the Mbone) for broadcasting on the Internet using multicasting. As proof of PARC's technology, the band's performance was broadcast and could be seen live in Australia and elsewhere. In a March 2017 interview, band member Russ Haines stated that the band had used approximately "half of the total bandwidth of the internet" to stream the performance, which was a pixel video, updated eight to twelve times per second, with audio quality that was, "at best, a bad telephone connection."


title: Streaming media

text: RealNetworks pioneered the broadcast of a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners over the Internet in 1995. The first symphonic concert on the Internet—a collaboration between the Seattle Symphony and guest musicians Slash, Matt Cameron, and Barrett Martin—took place at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, Washington, on November 10, 1995.


title: Streaming media

text: In 1996, Marc Scarpa produced the first large-scale, online, live broadcast, the Adam Yauch-led Tibetan Freedom Concert, an event that would define the format of social change broadcasts. Scarpa continued to pioneer in the streaming media world with projects such as Woodstock '99, Townhall with President Clinton, and more recently Covered CA's campaign "Tell a Friend Get Covered" which was live streamed on YouTube.


title: Streaming media

text: Xing Technology was founded in 1989, and developed a JPEG streaming product called "StreamWorks". Another streaming product appeared in late 1992 and was named StarWorks. StarWorks enabled on-demand MPEG-1 full-motion videos to be randomly accessed on corporate Ethernet networks. Starworks was from Starlight Networks, who also pioneered live video streaming on Ethernet and via Internet Protocol over satellites with Hughes Network Systems. Other early companies that created streaming media technology include Progressive Networks and Protocomm prior to widespread World Wide Web usage. After the Netscape IPO in 1995 (and the release of Windows 95, with built-in TCP/IP support), usage of the Internet expanded, and many companies "went public", including Progressive Networks (which was renamed "RealNetworks", and listed on Nasdaq as "RNWK"). As the web became even more popular in the late 90s, streaming video on the internet blossomed from startups such as Vivo Software (later acquired by RealNetworks), VDOnet (acquired by RealNetworks), Precept (acquired by Cisco), and Xing (acquired by RealNetworks).


title: Streaming media

text: Microsoft developed a media player known as ActiveMovie in 1995 that supported streaming media and included a proprietary streaming format, which was the precursor to the streaming feature later in Windows Media Player 6.4 in 1999. In June 1999 Apple also introduced a streaming media format in its QuickTime 4 application. It was later also widely adopted on websites along with RealPlayer and Windows Media streaming formats. The competing formats on websites required each user to download the respective applications for streaming and resulted in many users having to have all three applications on their computer for general compatibility.


title: Streaming media

text: In 2000 Industryview.com launched its "world's largest streaming video archive" website to help businesses promote themselves. Webcasting became an emerging tool for business marketing and advertising that combined the immersive nature of television with the interactivity of the Web. The ability to collect data and feedback from potential customers caused this technology to gain momentum quickly.


title: Streaming media

text: Around 2002, the interest in a single, unified, streaming format and the widespread adoption of Adobe Flash prompted the development of a video streaming format through Flash, which was the format used in Flash-based players on video hosting sites. The first popular video streaming site, YouTube, was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim in 2005. It initially used a Flash-based player, which played MPEG-4 AVC video and AAC audio, but now defaults to HTML5 video. Increasing consumer demand for live streaming prompted YouTube to implement a new live streaming service to users. The company currently also offers a (secured) link returning the available connection speed of the user.


title: Streaming media

text: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) revealed through its 2015 earnings report that streaming services were responsible for 34.3 percent of the year's total music industry's revenue, growing 29 percent from the previous year and becoming the largest source of income, pulling in around $2.4 billion. US streaming revenue grew 57 percent to $1.6 billion in the first half of 2016 and accounted for almost half of industry sales.


title: Streaming media

text: The term "streaming wars" was coined to discuss the new era (starting in 2019) of competition between video streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and Peacock.


title: Streaming media

text: Competition among online platforms has forced them to find ways to differentiate themselves. One key way they have done this is by offering exclusive content, often self-produced and created specifically for a market. This approach to streaming competition, can have disadvantages for consumers and for the industry as a whole. Once content is made available online, the corresponding piracy searches decrease. Competition or legal availability across multiple platforms effectively deters online piracy and more exclusivity does not necessarily translate into higher average investment in content, as investment decisions are also dependent on the level and type of competition in online markets.


title: Streaming media

text: This competition was increased during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic as more people stayed home and watched TV. "The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a seismic shift in the film & TV industry in terms of how films are made, distributed and screened. Many industries have been hit by the economic affect of the pandemic"(Totaro Donato). In August 2022, a CNN headline declared "The streaming wars are over" as pandemic-era restrictions had largely ended and audience growth had stalled. This lead services to focus on profit over market share by cutting production budgets, cracking down on password sharing, and introducing ad-supported tiers.


title: Streaming media

text: Advances in computer networking, combined with powerful home computers and operating systems made streaming media affordable and easy for the public. Stand-alone Internet radio devices emerged to offer listeners a non-technical option for listening to audio streams. These audio streaming services became increasingly popular; streaming music reached 118.1 billion streams in 2013.


title: Streaming media

text: In general, multimedia content is data intensive, so media storage and transmission costs are still significant. Media is generally compressed for transport and storage. Increasing consumer demand for streaming of high-definition (HD) content has led the industry to develop technologies such as WirelessHD and G.hn, which are optimized for streaming HD content. Many developers have introduced HD streaming apps that work on smaller devices such as tablets and smartphones for everyday purposes.


title: Streaming media

text: A media stream can be streamed either "live" or "on demand". Live streams are generally provided by a means called "true streaming". True streaming sends the information straight to the computer or device without saving to a local file. On-demand streaming is provided by a means called "progressive download". Progressive download saves the received information to a local file and then is played from that location. On-demand streams are often saved to files for extended amounts of time; while the live streams are only available at one time only (e.g. during the football game).


title: Streaming media

text: Streaming media is increasingly being coupled with use of social media. For example, sites such as YouTube encourage social interaction in webcasts through features such as live chat, online surveys, user posting of comments online and more. Furthermore, streaming media is increasingly being used for social business and e-learning.


title: Streaming media

text: The Horowitz Research State of Pay TV, OTT and SVOD 2017 report said that 70 percent of those viewing content did so through a streaming service and that 40 percent of TV viewing was done this way, twice the number from five years earlier. Millennials, the report said, streamed 60 percent of content.


title: Streaming media

text: One of the movie streaming industry's largest impacts was on the DVD industry, which effectively met its demise with the mass popularization of online content. The rise of media streaming caused the downfall of many DVD rental companies such as Blockbuster. In July 2015, "The New York Times" published an article about Netflix's DVD services. It stated that Netflix was continuing their DVD services with 5.3 million subscribers, which was a significant drop from the previous year. On the other hand, their streaming services had 65 million members.


title: Streaming media

text: Music streaming is one of the most popular ways in which consumers interact with streaming media. In the age of digitization, the private consumption of music transformed into a public good largely due to one player in the market: Napster.


title: Streaming media

text: Napster, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network where users could upload and download MP3 files freely, broke all music industry conventions when it launched in early 1999 in Hull, Massachusetts. The platform was developed by Shawn and John Fanning as well as Sean Parker. In an interview from 2009, Shawn Fanning explained that Napster "was something that came to me as a result of seeing a sort of an unmet need and the passion people had for being able to find all this music, particularly a lot of the obscure stuff which wouldn't be something you go to a record store and purchase, so it felt like a problem worth solving."


title: Streaming media

text: Not only did this development disrupt the music industry by making songs that previously required payment to acquire freely accessible to any Napster user, but it also demonstrated the power of P2P networks in turning any digital file into a public, shareable good. For the brief period of time that Napster existed, mp3 files fundamentally changed as a type of good. Songs were no longer financially excludable – barring access to a computer with internet access – and they were not rival, meaning if one person downloaded a song it did not diminish another user from doing the same. Napster, like most other providers of public goods, faced the free-rider problem. Every user benefits when an individual uploads an mp3 file, but there is no requirement or mechanism that forces all users to share their music. Thus, Napster users were incentivized to let others upload music without sharing any of their own files.


title: Streaming media

text: This structure revolutionized the consumer's perception of ownership over digital goods – it made music freely replicable. Napster quickly garnered millions of users, growing faster than any other business in history. At the peak of its existence, Napster boasted about 80 million users globally. The site gained so much traffic that many college campuses had to block access to Napster because it created network congestion from so many students sharing music files.


title: Streaming media

text: The advent of Napster sparked the creation of numerous other P2P sites including LimeWire (2000), BitTorrent (2001), and the Pirate Bay (2003). The reign of P2P networks was short-lived. The first to fall was Napster in 2001. Numerous lawsuits were filed against Napster by various record labels, all of which were subsidiaries of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, or EMI. In addition to this, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) also filed a lawsuit against Napster on the grounds of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, which ultimately led Napster to shut down in 2001. In an interview with the "New York Times", Gary Stiffelman, who represents Eminem, Aerosmith, and TLC, explained, "I’m not an opponent of artists’ music being included in these services, I'm just an opponent of their revenue not being shared."


title: Streaming media

text: The lawsuit "A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc." fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with music streaming. It was argued on 2 October 2000 and was decided on 12 February 2001. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a P2P file-sharing service could be held liable for contributory and vicarious infringement of copyright, serving as a landmark decision for Intellectual property law.


title: Streaming media

text: The first issue that the Court addressed was fair use, which says that otherwise infringing activities are permissible so long as it is for purposes "such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching [...] scholarship, or research." Judge Beezer, the judge for this case, noted that Napster claimed that its services fit "three specific alleged fair uses: sampling, where users make temporary copies of a work before purchasing; space-shifting, where users access a sound recording through the Napster system that they already own in audio CD format; and permissive distribution of recordings by both new and established artists." Judge Beezer found that Napster did not fit these criteria, instead enabling their users to repeatedly copy music, which would affect the market value of the copyrighted good.


title: Streaming media

text: The second claim by the plaintiffs was that Napster was actively contributing to copyright infringement since it had knowledge of widespread file sharing on its platform. Since Napster took no action to reduce infringement and financially benefited from repeated use, the court ruled against the P2P site. The court found that "as much as eighty-seven percent of the files available on Napster may be copyrighted and more than seventy percent may be owned or administered by plaintiffs."


title: Streaming media

text: The injunction ordered against Napster ended the brief period in which music streaming was a public good – non-rival and non-excludable in nature. Other P2P networks had some success at sharing MP3s, though they all met a similar fate in court. The ruling set the precedent that copyrighted digital content cannot be freely replicated and shared unless given consent by the owner, thereby strengthening the property rights of artists and record labels alike.


title: Streaming media

text: Although music streaming is no longer a freely replicable public good, streaming platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Amazon Music have shifted music streaming to a club-type good. While some platforms, most notably Spotify, give customers access to a freemium service that enables the use of limited features for exposure to advertisements, most companies operate under a premium subscription model. Under such circumstances, music streaming is financially excludable, requiring that customers pay a monthly fee for access to a music library, but non-rival, since one customer's use does not impair another's.


title: Streaming media

text: The music industry's response to music streaming was initially negative. Along with music piracy, streaming services disrupted the market and contributed to the fall in US revenue from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in 2009. CDs and single-track downloads were not selling because content was freely available on the Internet. By 2018, however, music streaming revenue exceeded that of traditional revenue streams (e.g. record sales, album sales, downloads). Streaming revenue is now one of the largest driving forces behind the growth in the music industry. In an interview, Jonathan Dworkin, a senior vice president of strategy and business development at Universal, said, "We cannot be afraid of perpetual change, because that dynamism is driving growth."


title: Streaming media

text: By August 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had streaming services busier than ever. In the UK alone, twelve million people joined a new streaming service that they had not previously had.


title: Streaming media

text: An impact analysis of 2020 data by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) indicated that remuneration from digital streaming of music increased with a strong rise in digital royalty collection (up 16.6% to EUR 2.4 billion), but it would not compensate the overall loss of income of authors from concerts, public performance and broadcast.  The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) recompiled the music industry initiatives around the world related to the COVID-19. In its State of the Industry report, it recorded that the global recorded music market grew by 7.4% in 2022, the 6th consecutive year of growth. This growth was driven by streaming, mostly from paid subscription streaming revenues which increased by 18.5%, fueled by 443 million users of subscription accounts by the end of 2020.


title: Streaming media

text: The COVID-19 pandemic has also driven an increase in misinformation and disinformation, particularly on streaming platforms like YouTube and podcasts.


title: Streaming media

text: A broadband speed of 2 Mbit/s or more is recommended for streaming standard-definition video, for example to a Roku, Apple TV, Google TV or a Sony TV Blu-ray Disc Player. 5 Mbit/s is recommended for high-definition content and 9 Mbit/s for ultra-high-definition content. Streaming media storage size is calculated from the streaming bandwidth and length of the media using the following formula (for a single user and file): storage size in megabytes is equal to length (in seconds) × bit rate (in bit/s) / (8 × 1024 × 1024). For example, one hour of digital video encoded at 300 kbit/s (this was a typical broadband video in 2005 and it was usually encoded in resolution) will be: (3,600 s × 300,000 bit/s) / (8 × 1024 × 1024) requires around 128 MB of storage.


title: Streaming media

text: If the file is stored on a server for on-demand streaming and this stream is viewed by 1,000 people at the same time using a Unicast protocol, the requirement is 300 kbit/s × 1,000 = 300,000 kbit/s = 300 Mbit/s of bandwidth. This is equivalent to around 135 GB per hour. Using a multicast protocol the server sends out only a single stream that is common to all users. Therefore, such a stream would only use 300 kbit/s of serving bandwidth. See below for more information on these protocols. The calculation for live streaming is similar. Assuming that the speed at the encoder is 500 kbit/s and if the show lasts for 3 hours with 3,000 viewers, then the calculation is number of MBs transferred = encoder speed (in bit/s) × number of seconds × number of viewers / (8 × 1024 × 1024). The results of this calculation are as follows: number of MBs transferred = 500 x 1024 (bit/s) × 3 × 3,600 ( = 3 hours) × 3,000 (number of viewers) / (8 × 1024 × 1024) = 1,977,539 MB.


title: Streaming media

text: In 2018 video was more than 60% of data traffic worldwide and accounted for 80% of growth in data usage.


title: Streaming media

text: The audio stream is compressed to make the file size smaller using an audio coding format such as MP3, Vorbis, AAC or Opus. The video stream is compressed using a video coding format to make the file size smaller. Video coding formats include H.264, HEVC, VP8 or VP9. Encoded audio and video streams are assembled in a container "bitstream" such as MP4, FLV, WebM, ASF or ISMA. The bitstream is delivered from a streaming server to a streaming client (e.g., the computer user with their Internet-connected laptop) using a transport protocol, such as Adobe's RTMP or RTP. In the 2010s, technologies such as Apple's HLS, Microsoft's Smooth Streaming, Adobe's HDS and non-proprietary formats such as MPEG-DASH have emerged to enable adaptive bitrate streaming over HTTP as an alternative to using proprietary transport protocols. Often, a streaming transport protocol is used to send video from an event venue to a "cloud" transcoding service and CDN, which then uses HTTP-based transport protocols to distribute the video to individual homes and users. The streaming client (the end user) may interact with the streaming server using a control protocol, such as MMS or RTSP.


title: Streaming media

text: The quality of the interaction between servers and users is based on the workload of the streaming service; as more users attempt to access a service, the more quality is affected unless there is enough bandwidth or the host is using enough proxy networks. Deploying clusters of streaming servers is one such method where there are regional servers spread across the network, managed by a singular, central server containing copies of all the media files as well as the IP addresses of the regional servers. This central server then uses load balancing and scheduling algorithms to redirect users to nearby regional servers capable of accommodating them. This approach also allows the central server to provide streaming data to both users as well as regional servers using FFMpeg libraries if required, thus demanding the central server to have powerful data-processing and immense storage capabilities. In return, workloads on the streaming backbone network are balanced and alleviated, allowing for optimal streaming quality.


title: Streaming media

text: Designing a network protocol to support streaming media raises many problems. Datagram protocols, such as the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), send the media stream as a series of small packets. This is simple and efficient; however, there is no mechanism within the protocol to guarantee delivery. It is up to the receiving application to detect loss or corruption and recover data using error correction techniques. If data is lost, the stream may suffer a dropout. The Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) and the Real-time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP) were specifically designed to stream media over networks. RTSP runs over a variety of transport protocols, while the latter two are built on top of UDP.


title: Streaming media

text: Another approach that seems to incorporate both the advantages of using a standard web protocol and the ability to be used for streaming even live content is adaptive bitrate streaming. HTTP adaptive bitrate streaming is based on HTTP progressive download, but contrary to the previous approach, here the files are very small, so that they can be compared to the streaming of packets, much like the case of using RTSP and RTP. Reliable protocols, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), guarantee correct delivery of each bit in the media stream. However, they accomplish this with a system of timeouts and retries, which makes them more complex to implement. It also means that when there is data loss on the network, the media stream stalls while the protocol handlers detect the loss and retransmit the missing data. Clients can minimize this effect by buffering data for display. While delay due to buffering is acceptable in video on demand scenarios, users of interactive applications such as video conferencing will experience a loss of fidelity if the delay caused by buffering exceeds 200 ms.


title: Streaming media

text: Unicast protocols send a separate copy of the media stream from the server to each recipient. Unicast is the norm for most Internet connections, but does not scale well when many users want to view the same television program concurrently. Multicast protocols were developed to reduce the server/network loads resulting from duplicate data streams that occur when many recipients receive unicast content streams independently. These protocols send a single stream from the source to a group of recipients. Depending on the network infrastructure and type, multicast transmission may or may not be feasible. One potential disadvantage of multicasting is the loss of video on demand functionality. Continuous streaming of radio or television material usually precludes the recipient's ability to control playback. However, this problem can be mitigated by elements such as caching servers, digital set-top boxes, and buffered media players.


title: Streaming media

text: IP multicast provides a means to send a single media stream to a group of recipients on a computer network. A multicast protocol, usually Internet Group Management Protocol, is used to manage delivery of multicast streams to the groups of recipients on a LAN. One of the challenges in deploying IP multicast is that routers and firewalls between LANs must allow the passage of packets destined to multicast groups. If the organization that is serving the content has control over the network between server and recipients (i.e., educational, government, and corporate intranets), then routing protocols such as Protocol Independent Multicast can be used to deliver stream content to multiple Local Area Network segments.


title: Streaming media

text: Peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols arrange for prerecorded streams to be sent between computers. This prevents the server and its network connections from becoming a bottleneck. However, it raises technical, performance, security, quality, and business issues.


title: Streaming media

text: Media that is livestreamed can be recorded through certain media players such as VLC player, or through the use of a screen recorder. Live-streaming platforms such as Twitch may also incorporate a video on demand system that allows automatic recording of live broadcasts so that they can be watched later. The popular site, YouTube also has recordings of live broadcasts, including television shows aired on major networks. These streams have the potential to be recorded by anyone who has access to them, whether legally or otherwise.


title: Streaming media

text: Useful – and typical – applications of streaming are, for example, long video lectures performed online. An advantage of this presentation is that these lectures can be very long, although they can always be interrupted or repeated at arbitrary places. There are also new marketing concepts. For example, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra sells Internet live streams of whole concerts, instead of several CDs or similar fixed media, by their Digital Concert Hall using YouTube for trailers. These online concerts are also spread over a lot of different places – cinemas – at various places on the globe. A similar concept is used by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. There also is a livestream from the International Space Station. In video entertainment, video streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ are mainstream elements of the media industry.


title: Streaming media

text: Marketers have found many opportunities offered by streaming media and the platforms that offer them, especially in light of the significant increase in the use of streaming media during COVID lockdowns from 2020 onwards. While revenue and placement traditional advertising continues to decrease, digital marketing increased in 15% in 2021, with digital media and search representing 65% of the expenditures.


title: Streaming media

text: A case study commissioned by the WIPO indicates that streaming services attract advertising budgets with the opportunities provided with interactivity and the use of data from users, resulting in personalization on a mass scale with content marketing. Targeted marketing is expanding with the use of artificial intelligence, in particular programmatic advertisement, a tool that helps advertisers decide their campaign parameters, and whether they are interested in buying advertising space online or not. One example of advertising space acquisition is Real-Time Bidding (RTB).


title: Streaming media

text: The availability of large bandwidth internet enabled the audiovisual streaming services to attract large number of users around the world.  For OTT platforms, original content represents a critical variable in order to capture more subscribers. This generated a number of effects related to the copyright over the audiovisual content and its international exploitation through streaming such as contractual practices, international exploitation of rights, widespread use of standards and metadata in digital files. The WIPO has indicated the several basic copyright issues arising for those pursuing to work in the film and music industry in the era of streaming.


title: Streaming media

text: Streaming copyrighted content can involve making infringing copies of the works in question. The recording and distribution of streamed content is also an issue for many companies that rely on revenue based on views or attendance.


title: Streaming media

text: The net greenhouse gas emissions from streaming music were estimated at between 0.2 and 0.35 million metric tons CO2eq (between ) per year in the United States, by a 2019 study. This was an increase from emissions in the pre-digital music period, which were estimated at " in 1977, 0.136 million () in 1988, and 0.157 million () in 2000." However this is far less than other everyday activities such as eating, for example greenhouse gas emissions in the United States from beef cattle (burping of ruminants only - not including their manure) were in 2019.


title: Streaming media

text: A 2021 study claimed that one hour of streaming or videoconferencing "emits of carbon dioxide ... requires of water and demands a land area adding up to about the size of an iPad Mini." The study suggests that turning the camera off during video calls can reduce the greenhouse gas and water use footprints by 96%, and that an 86% reduction is possible by using standard definition rather than high definition when streaming content with apps such as Netflix or Hulu. However another study estimated a relatively low amount of , and concluded that watching a Netflix video for half an hour emitted only the same as driving a gasoline fuelled car for about , so not a significant amount.


title: Streaming media

text: One way to decrease greenhouse gas emissions associated with streaming music is making data centers carbon neutral, by converting to electricity produced from renewable sources. On an individual level, purchase of a physical CD may be more environmentally friendly if it is to be played more than 27 times.Another option for reducing energy use can be downloading the music for offline listening, to reduce the need for streaming over distance. The Spotify service has a built-in local cache to reduce the necessity of repeating song streams.


title: Darth Vader

text: Darth Vader is a fictional character in the "Star Wars" franchise. The character is the central antagonist of the original trilogy and, as Anakin Skywalker, is one of the main protagonists throughout the prequel trilogy. "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has collectively referred to the first six episodic films of the franchise as "the tragedy of Darth Vader". He has become one of the most iconic villains in popular culture, and has been listed among the greatest villains and fictional characters ever. His masked face has become one of the most iconic character designs of all time.


title: Darth Vader

text: Originally a slave on Tatooine, Anakin Skywalker is a Jedi prophesied to bring balance to the Force. He is lured to the dark side of the Force by Chancellor Sheev Palpatine / Darth Sidious and becomes a Sith Lord, assuming the title of Darth Vader. After a lightsaber battle with his former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar, in which he is severely injured, Vader is transformed into a cyborg. He then serves the Galactic Empire for over two decades as its chief enforcer. Vader ultimately redeems himself by saving his son, Luke Skywalker, and killing Palpatine, sacrificing his own life in the process. He is also the secret husband of Padmé Amidala, the biological father of Princess Leia, and the grandfather of Kylo Ren (Ben Solo). In the non-canonical "Star Wars Legends" continuity, he is also the grandfather of Ben Skywalker, his eponym Anakin Solo, Jaina Solo and Darth Caedus (Jacen Solo), and the great-grandfather of Allana Solo.


title: Darth Vader

text: The character has been portrayed by numerous actors: David Prowse physically portrayed Vader while James Earl Jones has voiced him in all of the films and some television shows, and Sebastian Shaw portrayed the unmasked Anakin in "Return of the Jedi", as well as the character's spirit in the original release of that film. Jake Lloyd played Anakin Skywalker as a child in "The Phantom Menace", the first film of the prequel trilogy, while Hayden Christensen played him as a young adult in the following two films, post-2004 releases of "Return of the Jedi", and "Obi-Wan Kenobi".


title: Darth Vader

text: In addition to the first six "Star Wars" films, the character appears in the anthology film "Rogue One". He also appears in television series (most substantially "") and numerous iterations of the "Star Wars" Expanded Universe, including video games, novels, and comic books. Due to Vader's popularity, various merchandise of the character, such as action figures and replicas of his lightsaber, has been produced.


title: Darth Vader

text: According to "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, he experimented with various combinations of names for the character built upon the phrase "Dark Water". Then he "added lots of last names, Vaders and Wilsons and Smiths, and ... just came up with the combination of Darth and Vader". After the release of "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), Lucas stated that the name Vader was based upon the German/Dutch-language word or , meaning 'father', making the name representative of a "Dark Father". Other words which may have inspired the name are "death" and "invader", as well as the name of a high-school upperclassman of Lucas's, Gary Vader.


title: Darth Vader

text: As no other character with the title "Darth" was introduced until the release of "The Phantom Menace" (1999), some viewers interpreted it as the character's first name, in part because Obi-Wan Kenobi addresses him as "Darth" in the original film. The moniker is bestowed upon Anakin in "Revenge of the Sith" (2005) upon his turn to the dark side of the Force.


title: Darth Vader

text: Director Ken Annakin's films "Swiss Family Robinson" and "Battle of the Bulge" influenced the original trilogy, leading some to believe that Anakin was named after him. Lucas' publicist denied this following Annakin's death in 2009. Anakin and Luke's original surname "Starkiller" remained in the script until a few months into filming "Star Wars", when it was dropped due to what Lucas called "unpleasant connotations" with Charles Manson and replaced with "Skywalker".


title: Darth Vader

text: In France, the character's name was changed to "" starting with the original film. The names of other characters were changed too, but his is the only name that has been maintained even in the most recent films. The title "Dark" was used in place of "Darth" for the other Sith lords as well.


title: Darth Vader

text: In the Italian-language editions, Darth Vader is named "". In 2005, before the release of , an online survey asked Italian fans whether they would rather maintain the Italian name or switch it to the original: the first option won. In 2015, when had to be released, the Italian localisation decided to change the name to the English "Darth Vader".


title: Darth Vader

text: In the first draft of "The Star Wars", tall, grim general "Darth Vader" was already close in line with his final depiction, and the protagonist Annikin Starkiller had a role similar to that of his son Luke's as the 16-year-old son of a respected warrior. Originally, Lucas conceived of the Sith as a group that served the Emperor in the same way that the SS served Adolf Hitler. In developing the backstory for "The Empire Strikes Back", Lucas condensed this into one character in the form of Darth Vader.


title: Darth Vader

text: After the success of the original "Star Wars" film, Lucas hired science-fiction author Leigh Brackett to write the sequel with him. They held story conferences and, by late November 1977, Lucas had produced a handwritten treatment. In the first draft that Brackett would write from this, Luke's father appears as a ghost to instruct Luke. Lucas was disappointed with the script, but Brackett died of cancer before he could discuss it with her. With no writer available, Lucas wrote the next draft himself. In this draft, dated April 1, 1978, he made use of a new plot twist: Vader claims to be Luke's father. According to Lucas, he found this draft enjoyable to write, as opposed to the year-long struggles writing the first film. Lucas has said that he knew Vader was Luke's father while writing the first film, though the relationship is not explicitly evidenced before said draft of "The Empire Strikes Back".