andenator

I hate YouTube. I've had a frustrating week watching anti-corporate activists post their content to YouTube. There are a few obvious reasons why people do this. The first is that it's well known, has a huge number of users and it provides a lot of features non-corporate sites don't, chief amongst them a very easy publishing system and an embedded flash video player that works for almost everyone.

YouTube however also lacks a lot of features

• you can't download the videos and redistribute them
• you can't assign open content licenses
• no bittorrent or p2p downloads
• no videos longer than 10 minutes
• no vodcasting: you can only create your own channel in their site. if you want to add your content into your site you have to embed the video, you can't add a feed to you site.
• no screening quality video only crappy mass encoded flash video

The site is also riddled with dickheads who come out in droves when you post any kind of activist material. Additionally they have an extremely bad licensing policy which basically gives them the right to do almost anything they want with your work until you remove it from the site.

by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

YouTube terms

Interestingly a few videos posted to EngageMedia about the G20 demo ended up on YouTube. I'm torn as to how I feel about this. On one hand I think it's great that the content gets out there further, however there are a few big issues with it.

• Reposting it is actually a copyright violation as the videos are CC licensed as non-commercial. I'm not a huge fan of copyright and am generally fine with people even ripping off activist stuff, my beef with youtube is that they are making millions of dollars through user contributions that they have no right to. This doesn't concern me so much for billion dollar holywood studios but for independent producers it's a big deal.
• The video becomes decontextualized from it's original intention. This is quite important when it comes to police violence etc. It's critical people add information and a license not just to the page the video is added to but within the video clip itself. Digital distribution means that content is going to be redistributed, and that is generally a good thing. It means though that you have to make sure your video carries all the necessary meta-data about it.
• One video in particular shat me was this "remix" of police violence at Melbourne museum. I guess this is all an unavoidable consequence of digital media and distribution, the only way to counter it is to make better media and find a way to ride the wave. It's going to happen so better to be prepared.

In Steal this Film there is a very interesting quote that goes - "when the winds of change are blowing, some people build shelters, other build windmills." I think this attitude is vital in countering the new corporate media and building real alternatives that create equal partnerships between distributors and media makers and avoid the vampiric nature of the YouTubes, MySpaces and Flickrs.

I'm starting to find it strange how much activists used these sites given their highly dubious politics - google censorship in China, Yahoo dobbing in of Chinese dissidents, YouTube making billions from other people's content, Murdoch owning MySpace. There has to be a backlash, how about now?

In a strategic sense I can see some value in using these services, mostly based on getting to an audience that is new to a lot of these ideas and issues. I think it could be worth it if it brings people to other sites that build a different relationship with it's users. One key thing that worries me is the fact that many people go to YouTube for a quick bit of titillation: here's me smashing my wifes cockery with a coke can cannon, 2 mins of fox news, 3 minutes of random protestors getting beaten. OK back to work now. The rush of images seems to nuetralise their power, every image just flows into the next one as the user multitasks between email, instant messaging and whatever video they are watching at the time.

Perhaps some needs to rewrite art in the age of mechanical reproduction for the internet video age?