YouTube

Youtube and Its History:

Youtube is the largest video sharing website on which users can upload, share, comment and view videos. The insanely popular online video community (3rd most visited site behind Google and Facebook) was created by former Paypal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. The domain name www.youtube.com was first available on February 14, 2005 and featured a video of Karim titled "Me at the Zoo".

From the very beginnings of its inception, Youtube has grown tremendously fast. Only a year after it first started, the company announced that over 65,000 new videos were being uploaded each day and over 100 million videos were being viewed each day. It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. Now, Youtube says that 35 hours of new videos are uploaded every single minute. Also, in November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion.

Uploading:

Unregistered users may watch videos, and registered users may upload an unlimited number of videos. Most standard users can only upload videos under 15 minutes of length but users with a good track record (no violations of copyright policies or Youtube rules) may upload videos of unlimited length. Youtube features a simply and efficient way to upload videos. It accepts most formats and also supports 3GP, which allows videos to be uploaded from mobile phones. Additionally, Youtube now allows high quality videos to be uploaded up to 1080p.

Ethics of Uploads:

As expected with a fairly unregulated community, there are several ethical problems that have spawned from Youtube. In the past, the company has faced criticism for allowing offensive material to be uploaded. Because of the sheer amount of material that is constantly uploaded to Youtube, the company does not screen material before it is uploaded. YouTube relies on its community of users to flag videos that they deem inappropriate, and a YouTube employee will view a flagged video to make a final decision and determine whether or not it violates the site's terms of service. Additionally, videos that are considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users 18 and older.

Other than inappropriate videos, there has been a long struggle between Youtube and media companies of videos that break copyright policies. For all uploaded videos, YouTube users are shown a screen with the message "Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts or advertisements without permission, unless they consist entirely of content that you created yourself". This of course is largely ignored. Many organizations including Viacom, Mediaset and the English Premier League have filed lawsuits against Youtube but did not pass as Google is protected by provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Youtube has, however, introduced a system call Video ID, which checks newly uploaded videos against a database of copyrighted content to reduce the amount of violations.

Youtube Community:

Before Youtube arrived, there were very few cheap and easy methods for ordinary to reach out to the world and share their thoughts, experiences or memories through video. Now, with its simple interface, YouTube made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to post a video that a worldwide audience could watch and enjoy within a few minutes. With its wide range of topics and gigantic fan base, Youtube has become one of the most important part of the Internet culture.

One special phenomenon that I'd like to point out is the emergence of extremely popular videos that go "viral" in the online community. These videos reach millions of views in a short amount of time and become common place in our society. Some of these include "Charlie Bit My Finger", "Jizz in My Pants" and Rebecca Black's "Friday".