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Joe Lieberman

YouTube Inc. has updated its guidelines for acceptable content to ban videos that could incite violence, a move that Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) said is a direct response to his request last spring that videos sponsored by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda be removed from the site.

YouTube had previously turned down the request from Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, that it remove video content produced by terrorist organizations that showed assassinations, the deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training and other material. Lieberman said such content is intended to "encourage violence against the West."

At the time, YouTube said that most of the videos Lieberman had highlighted did not violate its community standards.

The updated YouTube Community Guidelines, posted last week, note that things "like predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people's personal information and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate the terms of use are taken very seriously."

Those caught violating the rules, the updated guidelines go on to note, may be permanently banned from YouTube. The video-sharing site also added tips and examples to explain its policies on hate speech, violence and other content.

While YouTube didn't explicitly mention terrorist videos or the pressure from Lieberman, the senator claimed that the move was taken in direct response to his earlier complaints.

"YouTube was being used by Islamist terrorist organizations to recruit and train followers via the Internet and to incite terrorist attacks around the world, including right here in the United States, and Google should be commended for recognizing that," Lieberman said in a statement. "I expect these stronger community guidelines to decrease the number of videos on YouTube produced by al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist terrorist organizations."

Lieberman went on to call on YouTube parent Google Inc. to remove all the videos created by terrorist organizations, not just those that violate the community guidelines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by KManRush (talk • contribs) 21:04, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This looks like it may be taken from an online news story. It was in the news recently, eg [1]. YouTube removed several videos after complaints from Senator Lieberman's office that they had violated YouTube's guidelines. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:05, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Israel and other local versions.

It'S nice that Israel had own local YT version but is there any news about this issue? Why it's English and not Hebrew like Indian version? OnurT^contribs 11:43, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a good point. YouTube's newest local version was launched on 16 September, 2008, and is at http://il.youtube.com/. Despite looking hard on Google, I was unable to find any online news story about its launch which could be used as a source in the article. Can anyone help here? The language of the Israeli version is English, which is widely spoken in the country. YouTube's interface can be displayed in a range of languages, but Hebrew and Arabic do not seem to be available at the time of writing. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 13:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Does this mean what I think it does...?

The YouTube Terms of Service includes a statement I'm trying to understand:

"You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless YouTube, its parent corporation, officers, directors, employees and agents, from and against any and all claims, damages, obligations, losses, liabilities, costs or debt, and expenses (including but not limited to attorney's fees) arising from: (i) your use of and access to the YouTube Website; ...[ii-iv:various liabilities]... This defense and indemnification obligation will survive these Terms of Service and your use of the YouTube Website."

The way this sounds to me, they are getting people to sign up to something that sounds like if and when they are ready for bankruptcy, they can go after their former subscribers and charge them for all of their normal costs of operation including just normal watching or posting videos. But surely people wouldn't be taking that... right? Wnt (talk) 22:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• I should congratulate Ianmacm for reverting the above question in only 6 minutes after its posting. In case it wasn't clear: I think that the Terms of Service in general should be discussed in this article, as they govern everything about what can or can't be done on the site. But in order to describe them we need to know what they mean. Wnt (talk) 00:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Please try to keep contributions to article related issues. The thread above looks like a forum posting. This part of the Terms of Service looks like standard legal blather and does not raise any article related issues. Also, I do not agree that it means that YouTube users will be held liable if the company goes bankrupt. What it seems to be saying is that if you use YouTube, you agree not to sue the company. It is legal boilerplate stuff and is nothing special. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:28, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Few statistics

"Few statistics are publicly available regarding the number of videos on YouTube." Does anyone know why it's so hard to find statistics about youtube? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.202.38.225 (talk) 20:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a good point. How many videos are there on YouTube as of August 2008? It would be interesting to mention this in the article, but the YouTube website seems to give no easy way to find out.

At the moment, the article says :

As of April 9, 2008, a YouTube search returns about 83.4 million videos and 3.75 million user channels.

However, a current search says "video results 1 - 20 of millions" and does not give a specific figure. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, the only source I could find is this page itself. From the page history, the series of rough video count can be retrieved until when YouTube hided the estimates.

1. 01-Nov-07 52000000
2. 14-Dec-07 59500000
3. 20-Dec-07 60500000
4. 28-Dec-07 61200000
5. 02-Jan-08 61700000
6. 15-Jan-08 65000000
7. 05-Feb-08 70200000
8. 15-Feb-08 72000000
9. 26-Feb-08 72600000
10. 15-Mar-08 77700000
11. 29-Mar-08 81000000 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.80.173.122 (talk) 10:54, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. As you point out, YouTube no longer gives the figures, which is a pity. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 11:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Um... JerryC deserves some credit don't you think?

Referring to the 'Social impact' section:

Seeing as JerryC (Taiwanese family name: Chang. First name unknown.) is the one who made the video of the cover of Pachelbel's Canon in D known as Canon Rock, why is it that Jeong-Hyun Lim (or Funtwo as he is known on Youtube) is the one featured? Although it is true that his cover (of JerryC's song) became massively popular at the same time and actually caused a lot of confusion amongst fans of the video(and new people to the song) over who made the song, it is a fact that JerryC was the one who made the song and Funtwo made a cover of it using the backing track created and released to the public by JerryC. It is also worth mentioning that Funtwo's cover is almost note-for-note the same.

Now I'm not sure which video (or which version of the song, JerryC's or Funtwo's cover of it) actually had the most views and my guess is that it would be very difficult to tell since so many people took the videos and re-uploaded them onto their own Youtube pages with different titles and descriptions. But if it is generally believed that Funtwo's got the most views then I think that at least JerryC should get a mention for being the one who started and created the backing track used by Funtwo. And, of course, if it was actually JerryC's that got the most then I think it should be him who is featured.

One of the strengths of Wikipedia is its use of wikilinks. By clicking on Jeong-Hyun Lim in the article, it is possible to read more about the Canon Rock video, including its link with Jerry C. It is true that Jeong-Hyun Lim's version is based on Jerry C's version, and he has never denied this. Incidentally, the Jerry C version can be found at [2]. The Jeong-Hyun Lim version is featured in the article YouTube because of the large amount of international media coverage that it generated. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 13:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

YouTube CEO quote is best source for 13-hr/min statistic

This is for a statistic in the 4th paragraph of the article-- The following direct quote from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley should be cited as a source--certainly more direct than any other source--for the YouTube statistic, as of June 2008, that over 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute. Also - the third footnote at the end of that sentence (currently #10) links to a Daily Telegraph article that says only 10 hours are uploaded per minute, which is already an outdated statistic. Here is the quote from Hurley, followed by the URL:

"With hundreds of competitors out there, people like to point at the content—or what they would consider problems for us—as the reason for our growth. But really what it comes to, what people miss, is that we build a true community around video. And that these hundreds of competitors are dealing with the same problems, but they’re not having the same growth. So that kind of tells you that we have built features and a community around video that’s enabled us to continue to grow to this day. … We continue to scale and grow like crazy. … We serve hundreds of millions of videos every day through our system. We receive over 13 hours of video every minute on our site. And we are still the process of growing, so we can still continue to build an architecture, and it's gotten easier with Google's help."

Chad Hurley. “How We Did It.” NewTeeVee.com. June 27, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-10-10. From 11:20 - 12:50.
http://newteevee.com/2008/06/27/chad-hurley-how-we-did-it/

68.174.101.64 (talk) 05:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC) 68.174.101.64 (talk) 06:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. The Daily Telegraph citation at [3] is a reference for the statement about YouTube's bandwidth consumption. The figure of around 13 hours of video being uploaded every minute comes from the New York Times article at [4]. This is a reliable source, and my personal preference would be to keep this citation as the NYT article contains some other useful information about YouTube. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, the decision is fair (and thank you for correcting me on the Daily Telegraph metric), but what about making the statistic "over 13 hours" instead of "around"? The preposition that is there now is, by definition, more approximate, and (not to be persnickety), but to say "around" could give the impression that it perhaps fluctuates between, let's say, between 11 and 15 hours of video being uploaded every minute, and if the NYTimes is saying "13 hours" and the CEO himself disclosed the figure as being "over 13 hours," then the stat in the article should at very least SAY either "13 hours" or "over 13 hours," but not "around 13 hours." Please let me know what you think.

68.174.101.64 (talk) 20:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

 Done --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:25, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Storage space

"YouTube was hosting about 6.1 million videos (requiring about 600 terabytes of storage space)" : 100 Mb per video seems quite exaggerated to me... -- Tanynep -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.83.155.55 (talk) 16:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

YouTube's bandwidth requirements and storage space have been the subject of considerable speculation. Since this is mentioned in the article and sourced to the Wall Street Journal at [5], a quick piece of original research showed that a standard quality streamed YouTube video (320 X 240 pixels) uses around 2.2 Megabytes per minute of data. However, this does not necessarily mean that the original video file was stored in this format prior to streaming. Also, a YouTube video could be anywhere from a few seconds to ten minutes long. Let's assume that each video is five minutes long. For the figure quoted (2.2MB), each video would stream around 11MB of data. Assuming 11MB streamed per video, the 100MB per video figure does seem exaggerated. However, the WSJ source at [6] estimates 45 terabytes of storage space, which seems more realistic. Incidentally, the WSJ figure comes from 2006 so it is quite old. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 19:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Regional versions

I think it would be really great if we can get more information (such as sim&diff) of youtubes at different countries. It'd be really helpful if we can have like translator who can translate other countrys' wiki and add those info. Also, can someone please change that "Republic of China" crap? It's seriously annoying when a few people becomes anal and claims that it's the "politically right" or that it's the "formal name" way, making no sense and are getting people confused (I don't see the "Demonion of Canada," "United Mexican States" or "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" do I?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Migleycow (talk • contribs) 15:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Republic of China is the correct formal name for Taiwan, which is the generally used name of the country. The wording in the table seems OK, but other comments are welcome. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 09:01, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with being politically right. "Republic of China" is to "Taiwan" as "United States" is to "America". "Republic of China"/"zhonghua minguo" is what the government on Taiwan calls itself. 143.89.188.6 (talk) 12:46, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

About most viewed video..

I'm not really sure if the long paragraph about Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend music video and the Evolution of Dance is necessary. But if it is, shouldn't it be mentioned also that there seems to be a much large number of favorites and ratings for the latter video? "Girlfriend" is only ranked #16 at number of favorites. That seems to point to some degree of fraud. 143.89.188.6 (talk) 12:45, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

This section tries to explain why a "most viewed" rating does not always indicate how popular a video is. The purists argue that other factors including "most favorited" should be taken into consideration, and this is why the Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex video ran into such controversy. Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" and the "Evolution of Dance" videos are both notable because of the amount of media coverage that they have received, but the "most viewed" status of these videos is likely to remain controversial. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:45, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

DMCA

No mention of false DMCA claims being used through YouTube? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.232.212.195 (talk) 00:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

It depends what is meant by false. YouTube changed the system a while back and will now take down a video under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act only if it receives a complaint from the actual copyright holder. Ordinary users can complain only about offensive content. Some DMCA claims have been controversial, and one is mentioned in the article, which is the claim over Prince's song Let's Go Crazy. Another controversial DMCA claim was against Christopher Knight's spoof Star Wars video. This is not mentioned in the article, but has been added to the see also section. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:34, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

You're only supposed to file a DMCA takedown notice if a video is in violation of copyright. Doing so without proper grounds to do so - for example in defiance of Fair Use - can potentially get you slapped with a perjury charge. There have been examples of DMCA takedown notices filed as a means of censorship. One recent incident involved user venomfangx who filed a cluster of DMCA notices when people used portions of his videos to criticize him. venomfangx ended up posting a statement of apology as part of a legal settlement with user Thunderf00t.Docsavage20 (talk) 11:03, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Stereo audio

I removed the part about stereo audio standard videos because a) it is now out of date, and b) it was becoming a long winded WP:NOTHOWTO of little interest to the average reader. The only official stereo videos on YouTube are the &fmt=18 versions, and this is mentioned in the article. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Issue with file formats

Ianmacm - your rationale for continuing to remove the information about file formats being treated differently does not seem valid. Seems presumptuous to declare one knows what the "average user" is or isn't going to be interested in. The section is called "Technical Notes", therefore it's the appropriate place for technical information. There's fairly extensive documentation of codecs, sampling frequencies etc. Mentioning this issue isn't a "how to" (and here's how you make an Xvid file...) it's presenting a more accurate overview and is clearly relevant to the topic. They can go elsewhere for the details. Mentioning the various codecs one can upload without mentioning that they aren't all handled equally well, particularly when YouTube itself addresses this issue although it's not obvious and easy to find - is incomplete and misleading. A brief mention of the issue is exactly the kind of thing anyone who uploads video would find of interest - unlikely anyone wants their video to be out of sync, etc. Audio sync is one of THE biggest gripes. It's valid, pertinent information and given what I've seen in various forums and on YouTube, at least being made aware of this could save a lot of people a lot of aggravation.Docsavage20 (talk) 18:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Earlier this year the article lost its Good Article status and one of the issues raised was WP:NOTHOWTO. The article should avoid reading like technical support for YouTube, or repeating material from the YouTube help section. I'm not an expert on the "average user", but have tried to avoid going into too much detail about the difference between standard, &fmt=6 and &fmt=18 videos and the codecs involved. The video/audio sync issue does not seem to be a major one for most videos, the advice given seemed to be repeating YouTube's help section. People will upload videos in a range of formats, and should raise the issue with YouTube directly if sync problems are occurring. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 19:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The peculiar to Wikipedia oddity of the socio-politics involved in an article "losing status" notwithstanding, in this circumstance I don't see "How To" as even being an issue. Saying "you can upload all these codes BUT there are known issues with some" is pertinent, informational and is of clear interest to everyone interested in uploading to YouTube. "How-To" would be to then describe the methodology of creating a certain file type. That's not what was done. It's not a "How To" any more that mentioning the upload interfaces - which is not a "how to upload to YouTube" tutorial, it's describing an aspect of YouTube. I also disagree that it's not an issue for a lot of videos. I don't know what forums you've been hanging out in but anywhere that I see people talking about YouTube videos, "the audio is out of sync" is probably the most common complaint I see, as well as simply observing it constantly on YouTube - and no that's not a point of view or original research issue when it's addressed by YouTube itself.Docsavage20 (talk) 03:35, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

There are many tech forums on the Internet and it is impractical for the article to cover all of the issues that may arise when using YouTube. There are postings where people have complained about the sound and vision being out of sync on YouTube (eg [7]), but there are so many digital video formats that it is hard to give absolute advice. Most of the videos that I have uploaded used WMV, AVI or .mov format and had no sync problems.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not "absolute advice", it's a general mention of a prevalent issue and supporting it with a reference. They can go to tech forums to get the details. If the codecs are going to be mentioned and I think they should be, it's logical and obvious within the context of this to include the caveat about them not being treated equally. The spoofing issue is mentioned, the fact that the files are uploadable to Ipods etc. are mentioned, those aren't how-to's. Same concept.Docsavage20 (talk) 13:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not totally against mentioning video/audio sync in the article, although it does seem to be more of a tech forum issue than a description of YouTube. To paraphrase YouTube's advice, sticking to WMV, AVI and MOV for the uploads gives the best results. My pet hate fault on YouTube is seeing 16:9 widescreen videos squashed up to 4:3, and I have lost count of the number of videos with this fault, which occurs far more often than sync problems. The squashing problem is not mentioned in the article because it is hard to say what is causing it without looking at the software and video files involved. At the risk of being pedantic about WP:OR, most of the complaints about sync come from the tech forums, and these are like straw polls which do not necessarily show how commonplace a problem is. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 13:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, and now I see you've removed the &fmt=18 information in the Standard and High Quality area as well as the clarifier that Flash Video is what's being downloaded with both the standard and "watch in high quality" options but not with &fmt=18, which is a distinctly different option than "watch in high quality" - different file type, A/V bitrates, codecs - and should be explained in the article. The way it was gave a clear explanation of the different formats used and when. And you've cut out a major conceptual link between the audio and video information. Now the &fmt=18 option is mentioned only in the audio area, with nothing in the video information to conceptually tie them. It should be mentioned first in the "standard and high quality" section so when the reader gets to the audio section they'll have a point of reference. Now it's "what's this &fmt=18 all about?" Well folks, it *was* explained but someone decided it shouldn't be. All you've accomplished is dumbing down the page and creating ambiguity and confusion, apparently with the notion that this makes it "better". It's a technical section, it should be assumed someone reading it wants technical information. Now it reads like some crappy high school text book with concepts dropped in half-explained, cogent points omitted.Docsavage20 (talk) 14:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the statement in the Video Format section "YouTube converts videos into the Flash Video format after uploading. YouTube also converts content to other formats so that it can be viewed outside of the website" isn't correct. It converts to MPEG-4 when using the &fmt=18 for viewing on YouTube as well.Docsavage20 (talk) 14:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Matters have become complicated since YouTube introduced the HQ videos. Strictly speaking, the &fmt=18 videos are intended to ensure compatibility with Apple's products [8]. Anyone with the up to date Adobe Flash Player can play the fmt18 versions, although the YouTube website offers fmt6 instead. The file extension of the default and fmt6 videos is .flv, while it is .mp4 for the fmt18 versions. This has now been clarified.

One area of concern is sourcing for the bit rates. It is hard to find traditional sources for this, and most of the estimates seem to have come from tech enthusiasts who have read the stream info using various pieces of software. The estimate of 600-800kbps for fmt6 seemed to be on the high side, but the most important issue is keeping the purists happy with WP:V. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)