YouTube has even been lauded by industry groups for its responsiveness to DCMA issues. YouTube has shown very little interest in bolstering its userbase through flagrant copyright violations. Unlike some of its less legitimate brothers, YouTube is doing everything it reasonably can to respect the honest rights of the copyright holders. have been able to bully media services that trafficked in copyrighted material, the same brute-force logic of “It's mine, you can't play it” is no longer applicable with much of the YouTube content. While, in the past, the RIAA, the MPAA, the NAB, etc. In an effort to distance themselves from “works in their entirety” and thus stay on the righteous side of Fair Use, YouTube has attracted a new breed of “reporter.” Sites use YouTube to quickly post video proof of the latest current events or examples of their points. It's much easier and more effective to just show why Raja Bell was suspended for a game or why Reggie Evans is now the most feared man among the male population.
However, that just doesn't have the impact of including the video clips. Sure, you could attempt to describe the events in question blow-by-blow. However, as uploaded and used, many of these clips represent “reporting.”įor instance, maybe you're preparing a blog post about the refereeing in the NBA playoffs. These clips are often the property of a media giant. You see, spread throughout the amateur videos are a slew of tightly-edited clips designed to illustrate points. Just as blogs have re-written the rules of print media, YouTube has quietly positioned themselves (or found themselves) at what could be the heart of the next major copyright battle: video clips.
#CLICKER FOR YOUTUBE TV#
While fair use discussion has, in the past few years, been dominated by DVD ripping and TV Show “sharing," YouTube might just find itself at the heart of the another oft-overlooked aspect of fair use, reporting and education. Ironically enough, however, it's YouTube's philosophy of small, digestible content and their willingness to avoid copyright issues that has positioned them to answer the age-old question of “What is fair use?” Most notably, the company now limits the length of uploaded videos to 10 minutes or shorter. Perhaps as a result of this (and other network threats requests) YouTube made some modifications to its policies in order to avoid future copyright issues.
The company acquiesced (as is its policy) and removed the offending clip. Earlier this year, YouTube was on the receiving end of an NBC nastygram which ever-so-politely requested the removal of the cult hit "Lazy Sunday" (aka The Chronic-what-cles of Narnia" ). Like all newly-emerging media companies, YouTube has had its run-ins with the established media giants. That's not to say that YouTube's success has come entirely from amateur content. This led to an explosion of both their viewership and their “catalog.” It's this grassroots support that's led to the company's phenomenal growth. More specifically, YouTube made it ridiculously easy to upload and post videos shot on cell phones, camcorders, etc. While other players spent the bulk of their time and effort courting the media giants and their large video catalogs. The secret to YouTube's big success? Thinking small. Other giants such as Google and AOL lag even further behind.
YouTube's traffic (well over 30 million streams per day) bests its nearest competitor, Yahoo, by 100 percent. Whether it's being used by the politicos pointing to Stephen Colbert's all-out Blitzkrieg on the President or, on the lighter side, by budding young directors, actors, and athletes eager to show off their Ninja Skillz, Light Saber Skillz, or Soccer Skillz, YouTube is quickly becoming the micro-content provider to beat. Modern surfers won't surf long without running into the seemingly ubiquitous YouTube player. While YouTube is preparing to celebrate just its first birthday, the upstart media company is already changing the face of the web. Riddle me this: what do you get when you combine a nifty little piece of Flash software, some backend mojo, an army of cellphone-toting teens, and one "Lazy Sunday" clip? The answer is, of course, the largest online video streaming service on the planet, YouTube.