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The video hosting website YouTube has been the object of various criticisms.

File:Copyrighted video at YouTube.png
Example of a copyrighted YouTube video claimed by Red De Television, ChileVision SA.

YouTube policy does not give permission for anyone to upload content not permitted by United States copyright law, the organization frequently removing upon request a vast quantity of infringing content. A decision in October 2007 allowed media companies to block their copyrighted video content loaded onto YouTube without seeking any prior permission.[1]

Despite this, a large amount of potentially infringing content continues to be uploaded, e.g. television shows/clips, film clips, commercials, music videos, or music concerts.

Until 2007, unless a copyright holder reported violation or infringement, YouTube generally discovered such content via indications within the YouTube community through self-policing. For a brief time, individual members could also report on one another. The flagging feature, intended as a means of reporting questionable content, has been subject to considerable abuse; for a time, some users were flagging other users' original content for copyright violations out of spite. YouTube proceeded to remove copyright infringement from the list of flaggable offenses.

Since 2007, changes to the interface mean that only rights holders are able to directly report copyright violations, even if they are obvious to casual viewers.

YouTube generally identifies video content through search terms that uploaders associate with clips. Some deceptive users create alternative search terms when uploading specific file types (similar to the deliberate misspelling of band names on MP3 filesharing networks).

Hollywood remains divided on YouTube, as "'the marketing guys love YouTube and the legal guys hate it.'"[2] Further,

While lawyers are demanding filtering technology, many Hollywood execs actually enjoy the fact that YouTube only takes down clips when they request it. "If I found part of a successful show up on YouTube today, I'd probably pull it down immediately .... If I had a show that wasn't doing so well in the ratings and could use the promotion, I wouldn't be in a rush to do that."[2]

Content owners are not just targeting YouTube for copyright infringements, but are also targeting third party websites that link to infringing content on YouTube and other video-sharing sites, for example, QuickSilverScreen vs. Fox,[3] Daily Episodes vs. Fox,[4] and Columbia vs. Slashfilm.[5] The liability of linking remains a grey area with cases for and against. The law in the U.S. currently leans towards website owners being liable for infringing links[6] although they are often protected by the DMCA providing they take down infringing content when issued with a take down notice. However, a recent court ruling in the U.S. found Google not liable for linking to infringing content (Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc.).

Examples of infringement complaints

On October 5, 2006, the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) finalized their copyright complaints regarding Japanese media on YouTube. Thousands of media from popular Japanese artists (such as Tokyo Jihen and other music including Jpop) were removed.

When CBS and Universal Music Group signed agreements to provide content on YouTube, they announced a new technology to help them find and remove copyrighted material.[7]

TV journalist Robert Tur filed the first lawsuit against the company in the summer of 2006, alleging copyright infringement for hosting a number of famous news clips without permission. The case has yet to be resolved.[8] [9]

On November 9, 2006, Artie Lange said that his lawyers were in talks with YouTube, after Lange learned that his entire DVD, It's the Whiskey Talking, was available for free on the website. He added that he will either demand money from them, or will sue.[10]

Viacom and the British Broadcasting Corporation both demanded YouTube to take down more than 200,000 videos.[11]

Wikinews has related news:

Viacom announced it was suing YouTube, and its owner Google, for more than $1 billion in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Viacom claims that YouTube posted over 160,000 of their videos on the website without their permission.[12][13] US District Court Judge Louis Stanton, on July 1, 2008 granted Viacom's request for data upon which YouTube viewers watch which videos on the website to support its case in a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against Google. He debunked privacy concerns, directing Google to give Viacom viewing log-in ID / names of YouTube users and Internet protocol (IP) addresses (online identifier) and video clip details (totalling more than 12 terabytes of data). The judgement was criticized by Google and privacy advocates. Simon Davies said that the privacy of millions of YouTube users was threatened: "The chickens have come home to roost for Google." Stranton however, denied Viacom's pleas "to get its hands on secret source code used in YouTube video searches as well as for Internet searches, and to order Google to provide access to the videos YouTube users store in private YouTube files."[14][15]

In May 2007, the English Premier League announced that it was suing YouTube for alleged copyright infringement, claiming that the website had "knowingly misappropriated" its intellectual property by encouraging Premier League football matches to be viewed on its site. [16]

In 2007 a 15-year-old Australian boy managed to get YouTube to delete over 200 YouTube videos belonging to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation using a fake DMCA take down notice. When the fake DMCA notice arrived, the ABC already had in place a long-standing deal with YouTube to freely share its videos. In his hand-written letter, the boy claimed that he was acting on behalf of the "Australian Broddcasting [sic] Corperation [sic]", giving his own Hotmail address as his business contact and demanded that hundreds of videos from ABC's The Chaser's War on Everything television program be deleted from YouTube's servers. Despite the boy not having any affiliation with the ABC and the spelling errors on his hand-written form, YouTube did delete all of the videos at the boy's request and replaced each with a message stating "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Australian Broadcasting Corporation".[17]

Philippine TV channel ABS-CBN also does not allow its videos to be on YouTube.

Use of acoustic fingerprints

On October 12, 2006, YouTube announced that because of recent agreements with high-profile content creators, they are now required to use antipiracy software, which uses an audio-signature technology that can detect a low-quality copy of licensed video. YouTube would have to substitute an approved version of any clip or remove the material immediately. Industry analysts speculated that removal of content with such a system might reduce overall user satisfaction.[18]

On April 16, 2007, Google's CEO Eric E. Schmidt presented a keynote speech at the NAB Convention in Las Vegas. During the Q&A session, Schmidt announced that YouTube was close to enacting a content filtering system to remove infringing content from the service. The new system, called "Claim Your Content", will automatically identify copyrighted material for removal.[19]

Google spokesperson Ricardo Reyes stated on June 13, 2007 that the company was seeking "a way to make video identification technology a reality" when they began to test the system in the next few days.[20][21]

On October 15, 2007, Google announced the release of YouTube Video Identification, a tool that would go "above and beyond our legal responsibilities."[22] In a blog posting on the release, YouTube product manager David King said YouTube Video Identification will help copyright holders identify their works on YouTube and choose what they want done with them.

Violence

Further information: [[:Cyber-bullying]]
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YouTube and similar sites were reportedly used by teenagers who record fights on mobile phones.[23] In July 2007, such an incident happened at a school in Hayling Island, U.K.[24] A video was uploaded at the end of 2006 of an arranged fight in Scarborough, England of two 16 year olds fighting, one of them then getting beaten up by at least 20 others. Additionally, in July 2007, a Briton urinated on a dying woman while a friend made a video of the incident. He reportedly yelled "This is YouTube material!"[25]http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/11/07/school.shooting/index.html</ref>] On March 30, 2008, a group of six girls and two boys beat up 16-year-old Victoria Lindsey. They planned to post the video on Youtube.[26]

Finland school shootings

Main article: Jokela school shooting

YouTube appears to have removed 89 videos linked to an 18-year-old gunman who on November 7, 2007 killed at least eight people in Finland. Many of the videos featured Nazi imagery. One of the videos, uploaded days before the incident, called "Jokela high school massacre 11/7/2007", showed a picture of a building by a lake and two photos of a young man holding a gun.[27]

Corruption

Criminal charges in Honduras

An unknown individual posted various recordings of high government officials in Honduras on YouTube, including of the President Mel Zelaya, implicating them in a corruption scandal concerning Hondutel, the state run telephone service[28]. After Zelaya made a complaint to the police they launched an investigation to find who had made the recordings, which are considered espionage and a violation of Honduras' privacy laws, that included searching the mansion of the CEO of Hondutel, Marcelo Chimirri[29], an action condemned by Zelaya[30]. On November 14 Chimirri appeared in court and was charged with various crimes related to the appearance of these clips on YouTube[31].

Animal abuse

YouTube has been criticized for hosting videos of real-life animal cruelty. One example is a video posted on YouTube in March 2008 by a US Marine showing him throwing a puppy off a cliff. Other Youtube videos show dog fighting and other animals forced to fight each other and one animal being fed to another, such as live food given to snakes. In spite of these videos being flagged as inappropriate by many users, YouTube has generally failed to take the same policing actions to remove them that they have with videos containing copyright infringement or sexual content. [32] [33] [34]

Neo-Nazis and genocide denial on YouTube

On December 18, 2007, CNN reported about the prevalence of neo-Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial videos on YouTube.[35] Hundreds of Nazi- and SS-glorifying, Holocaust-denying, anti-Semitic and racist videos have been brought to the attention of both YouTube and its parent company Google Inc. by the German Zentralrat der Juden ("Central Council of Jews"), which did "not get any response". The first reports about the violation of YouTube's own rules surfaced in August 2007 after the German TV-magazine Report Mainz reported that even over a hundred complaints by the federal Jugendschutz.net watchdog to YouTube about videos forbidden by German law had not been answered and that the flagged content had not been removed by YouTube.[36][37] [38] [39] Some of the flagged videos have been online for over a year. CNN contacted Google specifically about a 6 part video series of Holocaust Denial videos, which Google promised to "block immediately", but over five weeks later (and as of January 17, 2008) were still available.[40]At some point between then and the 9th of February 2008, the video was taken down for a "terms of use violation".[41]

Denial videos of other genocides (such as the Nanking Massacre) can also be found on YouTube. [citation needed]

Abusive users

YouTube has been criticised for not enforcing strict rules on the content of videos and comments on videos that may be deemed offensive. [42] This has allowed some users (known to the YouTube community as "Haters", "Trolls" and "Flamers") to post defamatory and abusive comments on videos and profiles of other users, and not be punished for it. The blocking system on YouTube has come under criticism because although a user may be blocked from posting comments on another user's profile, that user can still reply to comments another user has made on other system with the "reply to comments" system. The posting of potentially offensive videos and comments has been reported in the Daily Mirror, relating to comments on videos about the Munich Air Disaster, Hillsborough Disaster and the Soham Murders. Recently YouTube has taken a measure against abusive comments with a "comment voting" system, similar to Digg, although this has been criticised by others[citation needed], because it allows trolls to rate seemingly friendly comments negatively and hateful comments positively. It can also be abused by people with multiple accounts. When a person is banned, there is nothing stopping them from creating another account, provided that they have another e-mail address.

Censorship by country

The YouTube account of Tory Christman (aka Tory Magoo), a former member and now avid critic of the Church of Scientology, was suspended on April 15, 2008, after a worldwide protest against the Church 3 days prior.

On April 17,2008 Scientology critic Mark Bunker had his Youtube account xenutv1 suspended following a preview of an interview with actor Jason Beghe about his life inside the organisation and why he left. Critics quickly accused the "Church of Scientology" for influencing YouTube in their actions.

YouTube denied the "Church of Scientology" had any effort on xenutv1's suspension citing a copyright violation on Mark's original YouTube channel xenutv related to Mark's posting of a clip from the Colbert Report

Subsequently the full Jason Beghe interview and other videos by Mark Bunker have been posted by successive users on YouTube.

Mark has never had an active account on YouTube since April 17.

Since 2008, YouTube has started using geolocation to block certain countries from viewing certain videos. [1] It is claimed that this was done due to licensing issues, as certain videos were not licensed for use outside a certain country. [2]. The most common examples would be either a clip from the BBC Channel, only available to the UK [3] or Ashley Tisdale's "He Said, She Said", probably not available to anyone outside the United States [4]. It was possible to watch blocked videos by changing the URL from http://youtube.com/?v=[video ID] to http://youtube.com/v/[video ID], but YouTube has since fixed this. [43]


References

  1. ^ "YouTube allows media companies to block copyrighted content". Retrieved 2007-10-16.
  2. ^ a b Jones, Ben (2007-03-10). "Showbiz's site fright/Web seen as both a threat and a gold mine". Variety. Retrieved 2007-03-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Guy, IPTV (2006-07-12). "TV Show Directory QuickSilverScreen.com Threatened by Fox". Web TV Wire. Retrieved 2006-10-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Thor, Lord (2006-10-02). "DailyEpisodes closed down by Fox, for LINKING to TV show episodes!". Digg.com. Retrieved 2006-12-10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Sciretta, Peter (2006-07-26). "Columnia Pictures tells /Film to remove website link". SlashFilm. Retrieved 2006-10-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ "Linking to infringing TV Shows is probably illegal in the US". WebTVWire. 2006-09-26. Retrieved 2006-10-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Lombardi, Candace (2007-12-02). "YouTube cuts three content deals". Cnet-News.com. Retrieved 2007-12-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ Jones, K.C. (2006-07-18). "Journalist Sues YouTube For Copyright Infringement". InformationWeek.com. Retrieved 2006-07-28. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ Montgomery, James (2006-07-19). "YouTube Slapped With First Copyright Lawsuit For Video Posted Without Permission". MTV.com. Retrieved 2006-07-28. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ "Scripting News for 10/12/2006". Scripting News Annex. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
  11. ^ Sandoval, Greg (2007-02-02). "Does YouTube have a control problem?". cnet. Retrieved 2007-02-04. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); More than one of |author= and |last= specified (help)
  12. ^ Reuters (2007-03-13). "Viacom in $1 bln copyright suit vs Google, YouTube". Reuters. Retrieved 2007-03-13. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ BBC News (2007-03-13). "Viacom will sue YouTube for $1bn". BBC. Retrieved 2007-03-13. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ Afp.google.com, Judge orders Google to give YouTube user data to Viacom
  15. ^ bbc.co.uk, Google must divulge YouTube log
  16. ^ Premier League to take action against YouTube - Football News - Telegraph
  17. ^ Jensen, Erik (2007-04-14). "Boy dupes YouTube to delete videos". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  18. ^ Veiga, Alex (2006-10-12). "Anti-piracy system could hurt YouTube". Associated Press. Retrieved 2006-10-13. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ Ali, Rafat (2007-04-16). "NAB: GoogleTube Close To Its "Claim Your Content" Filtering System". paidcontent.org. Retrieved 2007-04-17. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  20. ^ Google Plans Video Identification Test For YouTube Next Month - YouTube Content Identification
  21. ^ http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/12/technology/youtube_id.reut/index.htm
  22. ^ Official Google Blog: Latest content ID tool for YouTube
  23. ^ June 1, 2006, the evening ITV News bulletin
  24. ^ Police remove film of girls fighting from You Tube Daily Telegraph Saturday 21 July 2007 (Number 47316)
  25. ^ USA Today: BBC: Man admits urinating on ill woman... shouted "this is YouTube material"[
  26. ^ http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/10/girl.fights/index.html?iref=newssearch
  27. ^ CNN Finland School Shootings Story http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/11/07/school.shooting/index.html
  28. ^ La Prensa - Casi 300 mil visitas a las grabaciones / 08 / 11 / 2007 / Ediciones / La Prensa
  29. ^ Policía catea vivienda de Chimirri
  30. ^ Zelaya condena acción policial en allanamiento de casa de Chimirri
  31. ^ La Prensa - Chimirri se defenderá en libertad / 14 / 11 / 2007 / Ediciones / La Prensa
  32. ^ Times online, "Animal cruelty films on YouTube" August 19, 2007, retrieved August 25, 2007.
  33. ^ Practical Fishkeeping, "Uproar at fish cruelty on YouTube" May 17, 2007, retrieved August 25, 2007.
  34. ^ Honolulu Star Bulletin,"Marine Tosses Dog from Cliff on Youtube March 4, 2008, retrieved March 21st 2008.
  35. ^ "Neo Nazis on YouTube". CNN. December 18, 2007. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  36. ^ Neonazi-Propagandafilme: Zentralrat der Juden droht YouTube mit Anzeige - Netzwelt - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten
  37. ^ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/28/google_germany_neo_nazi/
  38. ^ YouTube criticized in Germany over Neo-Nazi clips | Technology | Reuters
  39. ^ YouTube criticized in Germany over anti-Semitic Nazi videos - Haaretz - Israel News
  40. ^ Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com
  41. ^ YouTube - Broadcast Yourself
  42. ^ icLiverpool - Fury as YouTube carries sick Hillsboro video insult
  43. ^ http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/watch-restricted-youtube-videos.html
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