YouTube
YouTube is the primary video viewing website in the world. After coming onto the seen in 2005 it has quickly ballooned into a national phenomenon. It now has millions of videos and hundreds of millions of viewers per day. YouTube has become a source of education, but most of all fun.
Contents
History
YouTube was created in 2005 after its founders had difficulty sharing videos with each other. After being funded by Sequoia Capital a beta came out and was quickly followed by a real version. The site grew rapidly and was bought by Google in 2006. It then made deals with movie producers as well as television stations so that it could show their products. Google+ has now adopted YouTube as its video viewing mechanism providing one more way for people to watch videos.
Money Making
Similar to Facebook YouTube is a free website that makes all of its money through advertising. YouTube does not sell a product, it does not even exist outside of the internet, but these things do not stop it from being one of the top money making websites. Advertisers spend thousands of dollars so that they can have their products be featured on the top watched videos.
Copyright Concerns
YouTube faces tremendous copyright issues mainly because it does not monitor the content of any videos. It is stated that you are not allowed to upload pornography or other videos that are detrimental in nature. Also copyrighted materials are not allowed to be uploaded. This, however, has not been a deterrent to thousands of people. There are millions of videos on YouTube that are illegal, in terms of copyrighted material, but YouTube does not take them down on their own. In fact YouTube makes little to no effort to enforce the policies that it lists unless a user or company has brought an issue to their attention. This creates a problem for many musical artists who rely on music purchases for their well being. Because YouTube does not actively seek out and remove illegal material this job is left in the hands of those concerned. Some artists may see the upload of their music as a benefit. By their music being uploaded their listeners are showing that they want other people to listen. An artist may feel that their music being shown to more people is what music is all about. To musicians that do not care about monetary things, the fact that their music is being listened to in itself is a great thing. Movies also have to deal with copyright concerns because they can be uploaded in pieces and go relatively unseen by the movie producers.
More Problems
The anonymous nature of YouTube provides another context for bad behavior. In the incident of Dusty the Cat anonymity was destroyed. In cases where an individual has their account blocked for uploading illegal videos they can simply make a new account and continue. Punishing maladaptive behavior is done by removing video and/or blocking users, but this is hardly a deterrent. A user who has uploaded a video that has been removed could change a small aspect of the movie and repost it, perhaps using another account and then the video would again be on YouTube.
