YOUTUBE GESCHIEDENIS

Ik heb me tijdens het schrijven van een school essay bezig gehouden met YouTube als New Media fenomeen. Deze heb ik hieronder ook bijgevoegd (voor degenen die daar zin in hebben :) Wat ik vooral erg interessant vind is hoe mensen elkaar kunnen activeren en mobiliseren via het internet. Verder ook hoe er een interactie plaatsvindt tussen mensen die in dit geval (van de handen vanaf minuut 28.40. ) ook leiden naar een mooi beeld. Ik zie het als een soort internet activisme hoe klein ook.

Youtube is ook interessant omdat het nu in handen is van de Media gigant Google. Hun uiteindelijke doel zal toch geld verdienen zijn. Hoe tast dit de 'vrijheid' aan van de content op deze website? Copyrights is ook iets wat bij YouTube lastig is en waar vele discussies zich mee bezig houden. Studenten van de MIT in Amerika hebben een website opgezet om te kijken welke filmpjes er worden verwijderd van Youtube, hoe snel en door wie. De website is: youtomb.mit.edu Waar ligt de grens tussen aantasting van copyrights en creativiteit?

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In October 2006 Youtube was purchased by Google. Youtube, a website on which users can upload and share videos, had grown quickly into one of the most popular websites on the internet. "Now that YouTube has the financial backing of Google, media conglomerates can pressure it to remove copyrighted content (previously YouTube had very little assets so there was nothing to sue)" (Castells, 2007, p. 253).

Students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology started in 2008 the website YouTomb. "YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation" (YouTomb, 2008). The students are especially interested in the automated removal of videos that may infringe copyright. An automated scanning system cannot differentiate between fair use and copyright violation with 100 percent accuracy. "Fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and transformative purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner" (Stanford University Libraries, 2007). As a result of Youtube's scanning system, some totally legitimate videos are disappearing from the web entirely. Norris argues "Digital technologies may appear egalitarian, a resource for alternative social movements and transnational advocacy networks, but in practice they may strengthen the power of entrenched authorities, multinational corporations, and established officials, rather than challenging them" (2001, p. 101). In this case the multinational corporation Google. "As Lawrence Lessig put it, they (media, telecoms, and computing firms) "declared war against rip, mix, burn culture" (Lievrouw, 2006, p. 117).

Fuchs shows in his article: "Some reflections on Manuel Castells' Book "Communication Power" a table of the top 20 web 2.0/3.0 platforms (2009, p. 99). Youtube is ranked as second and is a profit-oriented and advertisement based platform. Fuchs concludes: "19 out of 20 of the dominant web 2.0/3.0 platforms are profit-oriented, the only exception is Wikipedia, which is advertising-free and non-profit" (2009, p. 99-100). Looking at these results what can we say about the freedom and the autonomy of the users of these platforms? Fuchs suggests "Given these empirical results, one can question to which degree web 2.0/3.0 users are autonomous from capital. On the vast majority of platforms that they visit, their data and usage behaviour is stored and assessed in order generate profit by targeted advertising" (Fuchs, 2009. p. 95).

Youtube's user generated content is being monitored, selected and removed by an automated scanning system. Big media companies have much communication power in their hands and even profit from their users. "During much of the time that users spend online, they produce profit for large corporations like Google, News Corp. (which owns MySpace), or Yahoo! (which owns Flickr)" (Fuchs, 2009, p. 100) But oviously this does not decrease the popularity of Youtube.

Biography

Castells, Manuel. “Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Scoiety.” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007):238-266.

Fuchs, Christian. "Some reflections on Manuel Castells' Book "Communication Power." TripleC 7 (1) (2009):94-108. .

Lievrouw, Leah A. “Oppositional and Activist New Media: Remediation, Reconfiguration, Participation.” Proceedings of the Ninth Participatory Design Conference 2006. New York:
ACM Press. (2006):115-124.

Norris, Pippa. “Theories of Digital Democracy.” Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2001):95-111.

Stanford University Libraries, Copyright & Fair Use. "What is Fair Use?" Stanford University 2007, 15 Dec. 2009 .

YouTomb, "What is YouTomb?" 2009. MIT Free Culture, Massachusetts. 15 Dec. 2009 .