YouTube is a
video sharing website on which users can upload and share
videos. Three former
PayPal
employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006,
YouTube, LLC was bought by
Google Inc. for
$1.65 billion, and is now operated as a
subsidiary of Google.
The company is based
in San Bruno,
California
, and uses Adobe Flash
Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content,
including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such
as video blogging and short original
videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by
individuals, although media corporations including
CBS, the
BBC,
UMG and other organizations offer some
of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership
program.
Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are
permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos that are
considered to contain potentially offensive content are available
only to registered users over the age of 18. The uploading of
videos containing
defamation,
pornography,
copyright violations, and material
encouraging criminal conduct is prohibited by YouTube's
terms of service. The account profiles of
registered users are referred to as "channels".
Company history
YouTube was founded by
Chad Hurley,
Steve Chen and
Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of
PayPal.
Hurley studied design at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania
, while Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
.
According
to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Chad Hurley
and Steve Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early
months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing
videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in
San
Francisco
.
Jawed Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had
occurred, and Chad Hurley commented that the idea that YouTube was
founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by
marketing ideas around creating a story that was very
digestible."
YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily
from a US$11.5 million investment by
Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and
April 2006.
YouTube's early headquarters were situated
above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo,
California
. The
domain name
www.youtube.com was activated on February 15, 2005,
and the website was developed over the subsequent months.
The first
YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows
founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo
. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005,
and can still be viewed on the site.
YouTube offered the public a
beta test of
the site in May 2005, six months before the official launch in
November 2005. The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company
announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded
every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views
per day.
According to data published by market research company comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of
online video in the United
States
, with a market share of
around 43 percent and more than six billion videos viewed in
January 2009. It is estimated that 20 hours of new videos
are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three
quarters of the material comes from outside the United States. It
is also estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much
bandwidth as the entire
Internet in 2000. In March 2008, YouTube's
bandwidth costs were estimated at approximately US$1 million a day.
Alexa ranks YouTube as the fourth
most visited website on the Internet, behind
Google,
Yahoo! and
Facebook.
The choice of the name
www.youtube.com led to problems
for a similarly named website,
www.utube.com. The
owner of the site,
Universal Tube &
Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November
2006 after being overloaded on a regular basis by people looking
for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its
website to
www.utubeonline.com.
In October 2006,
Google Inc. announced that
it had acquired YouTube for
US$1.65 billion in Google
stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,
2006. Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's
running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as
"
not material" in a
regulatory filing. In June 2008 a
Forbes
magazine article projected the 2008 revenue at US$200 million,
noting progress in advertising sales.
In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with
MGM,
Lions Gate
Entertainment and
CBS which will allow the
companies to post full-length films and television shows on the
site, accompanied by advertisements. The move is intended to create
competition with websites such as
Hulu, which
features material from
NBC,
Fox, and
Disney.
On October 9, 2009, the third anniversary of the acquisition by
Google, Chad Hurley announced in a blog
posting that YouTube was serving "well over a billion views a day"
worldwide.
Social impact
Before the launch of YouTube in 2005, there were few easy methods
available for ordinary computer users who wanted to post videos
online. With its simple interface, YouTube made it possible for
anyone with an Internet connection to post a video that a worldwide
audience could watch within a few minutes. The wide range of topics
covered by YouTube has turned video sharing into one of the most
important parts of
Internet
culture.
An early example of the social impact of YouTube was the success of
the
Bus Uncle video in 2006. It shows a
heated conversation between a youth and an older man on a bus in
Hong Kong, and was discussed widely in the mainstream media.
Another YouTube video to receive extensive coverage is
guitar, which features a performance of
Pachelbel's Canon on an
electric guitar. The name of the performer
is not given in the video, and after it received millions of views
The New York Times
revealed the identity of the guitarist as
Jeong-Hyun Lim, a 23-year-old from South
Korea who had recorded the track in his bedroom.
YouTube was awarded a 2008
George Foster Peabody Award and
cited for being "a 'Speakers' Corner' that both embodies and
promotes democracy."
Criticism
Copyrighted material
YouTube has been criticized for failing to ensure that its videos
respect the law of
copyright. At the time
of uploading a video, YouTube users are always shown a screen with
the following message:
Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music
concerts or commercials without permission unless they consist
entirely of content you created yourself.
The Copyright Tips page and the Community Guidelines
can help you determine whether your video infringes someone else's
copyright.
Despite this advice, there are still many unauthorized clips from
television shows, films and music videos on YouTube. YouTube does
not view videos before they are posted online, and it is left to
copyright holders to issue a takedown notice under the terms of the
Digital Millennium
Copyright Act. Organizations including
Viacom,
Mediaset and the
English
Premier League have filed
lawsuits against YouTube, claiming that it has done too little to
prevent the uploading of copyrighted material. Viacom, demanding
US$1 billion in
damages, said that it had
found more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of its material on
YouTube that had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times".
YouTube responded by stating that it "goes far beyond its legal
obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works".
Since Viacom filed its lawsuit, YouTube has introduced a system
called Video ID, which checks uploaded videos against a database of
copyrighted content with the aim of reducing violations.
In August 2008, a U.S. court ruled in
Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. that
copyright holders cannot order the removal of an online file
without first determining whether the posting reflected
fair use of the material.
The case involved
Stephanie Lenz from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania
, who had made a home
video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy" and posted the 29-second
video on YouTube.
Criticism of court ruling
In July 2008,
Viacom won a court ruling
requiring YouTube to hand over data detailing the viewing habits of
every user who has watched videos on the site. The move led to
concerns that the viewing habits of individual users could be
identified through a combination of their
IP
addresses and login names. The decision was criticized by the
Electronic Frontier
Foundation, which called the court ruling "a set-back to
privacy rights". U.S. District Court Judge
Louis Stanton dismissed the privacy concerns
as "speculative", and ordered YouTube to hand over documents
totalling around 12
terabytes of data.
Judge Stanton rejected Viacom's request for YouTube to hand over
the
source code of its
search engine system, saying that
there was no evidence that YouTube treated videos infringing
copyright differently.
Inappropriate content
YouTube has also faced criticism over the offensive content in some
of its videos. Although YouTube's
terms
of service forbid the uploading of material likely to be
considered inappropriate, YouTube does not check every video before
it goes online.
Controversial areas for videos have included
Holocaust denial and the Hillsborough Disaster, in which 96
football fans from Liverpool
were crushed to death in 1989, conspiracy theories
and religion.
YouTube relies on its users to flag the content of videos as
inappropriate, and a YouTube employee will view a flagged video to
determine whether it violates the site's
terms of service.
In July 2008 the
Culture and Media Committee of the House of
Commons of the United Kingdom
stated that it was "unimpressed" with YouTube's
system for policing its videos, and argued that "Proactive review
of content should be standard practice for sites hosting user generated content."
YouTube responded by stating: "We have strict rules on what's
allowed, and a system that enables anyone who sees inappropriate
content to report it to our 24/7 review team and have it dealt with
promptly. We educate our community on the rules and include a
direct link from every YouTube page to make this process as easy as
possible for our users. Given the volume of content uploaded on our
site, we think this is by far the most effective way to make sure
that the tiny minority of videos that break the rules come down
quickly."
Blocking
Several
countries have blocked access to YouTube since its inception,
including the People's Republic of
China
, Morocco
, and Thailand
. YouTube is currently blocked in Turkey
after
controversy over videos deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Despite the block,
Turkish
Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan admitted to journalists that he could access
YouTube, since the site is still available in Turkey by using an
open proxy.
On
December 3, 2006, Iran
temporarily
blocked access to YouTube, along with several other sites, after
declaring them as violating social and moral codes of
conduct. The YouTube block came after a video was posted
online that appeared to show an Iranian soap opera star having sex.
The block was later lifted and then reinstated after
Iran's 2009 presidential
election.
On
February 23, 2008, Pakistan
blocked YouTube due to "offensive material" towards
the Islamic faith, including display of the
Danish
cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. This led to a near global blackout
of the YouTube site for around two hours, as the Pakistani block
was inadvertently transferred to other countries. Pakistan lifted
its block on February 26, 2008. Many Pakistanis circumvented the
three-day block by using
virtual
private network software.
Schools in some countries have blocked access to YouTube due to
students uploading videos of
bullying
behavior, school fights,
racist behavior, and
other inappropriate content.
Video technology
Comparison of normal, high, and HD quality YouTube videos played in
YouTube and their native resolution.
Playback
Viewing YouTube videos requires the
Adobe Flash Player plug-in to be installed in the
browser. The
Flash
Video format is supported by 98% of browsers and accounts for
almost 75% of online video material.
Uploading
Videos uploaded to YouTube by standard account holders are limited
to ten minutes in length and a file size of 2
GB. When YouTube was launched in 2005 it was
possible to upload longer videos, but a ten minute limit was
introduced in March 2006 after YouTube found that the majority of
videos exceeding this length were unauthorized uploads of
television shows and films. Partner accounts are permitted to
upload videos longer than ten minutes, subject to acceptance by
YouTube.
YouTube accepts videos uploaded in most container filetypes,
including
.AVI,
.MKV,
.MOV,
.MP4,
DivX,
.FLV, and
.OGG. These
include video codecs such as
MPEG-4,
MPEG, and
.WMV. It also supports
3GP, allowing videos to be uploaded directly even from
legacy mobile
phones.
Quality and codecs
YouTube originally offered videos at only one quality level, but it
now has three main quality levels, as well as a "mobile" format,
for viewing on
mobile phones. The
original quality level, now labeled "standard quality", displays
videos at a resolution of 320x240
pixels using
the
Sorenson Spark codec, with
mono MP3 audio. This
was, at the time, the standard for streaming online videos.
"High quality" videos, introduced in March 2008, use the
Sorenson Spark codec at up to 864x480 pixels
with stereo
AAC audio. This
format offers a significant improvement over standard quality. In
November 2008
720p HD support was added. At the same
time, the YouTube player was changed from a
4:3
aspect ratio to a
widescreen 16:9. 720p videos
use the
MPEG-4 AVC codec at 1280x720 pixels,
with stereo
AAC audio. In
mid-November 2009,
1080p HD support was added.
1080p videos are shown at 1920x1080 pixels, also using
MPEG-4 AVC video and
AAC audio.
Comparison of current YouTube media types (media uploaded
before February 2009 may use other formats)
|
Standard |
Medium |
High |
720p |
1080p |
Mobile |
|
"fmt" value, container |
34, flv |
18, mp4 |
35, flv |
22, mp4 |
37, mp4 |
17, 3gp |
|
Video |
Codec |
MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) |
MPEG-4 Part 2 |
| Aspect
ratio |
4:3, 16:9 |
4:3 |
16:9 |
11:9 |
| Max
Resolution |
320×240
400×226
640x360 |
480×360 |
854×480 |
1280×720 |
1920x1080 |
176×144 |
| Audio |
All audio uses AAC encoding with 2 channels at
44.1 kHz. |
3D videos
In a video posted on July 21, 2009, YouTube software engineer Peter
Bradshaw announced that YouTube users can now upload
3D videos. The videos can be viewed in several
different ways, including the common
anaglyph (cyan/red lens) method which
utilizes glasses worn by the viewer to achieve the 3D effect.
HTML5 video playback
YouTube is currently testing
HTML5 technology,
which will allow videos to be viewed without the use of the
Adobe Flash Player plug-in. The YouTube site has a test
page which can be viewed on browsers supporting HTML5 and the
required
codecs.
Content accessibility
One of the key features of YouTube is the ability of users to view
its videos on web pages outside the site. Each YouTube video is
accompanied by a piece of
HTML, which can be
used to embed it on a page outside the YouTube website. This
functionality is often used to embed YouTube videos in
social networking pages and
blogs.
YouTube does not usually offer a download link for its videos, and
intends that they are viewed through its website interface. A small
number of videos, such as the weekly addresses by President
Barack Obama, can be downloaded as
MP4 files. Numerous third-party web
sites, applications and browser
plug-ins allow users to download YouTube
videos. In February 2009, YouTube announced a test service,
allowing some partners to offer video downloads for free or for a
fee paid through
Google
Checkout.
Platforms
Some
smart phones are capable of
accessing YouTube videos, dependent on the provider and the data
plan. YouTube Mobile was launched in June 2007, and uses
RTSP streaming for the video.
Not all of YouTube's videos are available on the mobile version of
the site.
Since
June 2007, YouTube's videos have been available for viewing on a
range of Apple
products. This required YouTube's content to be transcoded
into Apple's preferred video standard,
H.264, a process that took several months.
YouTube videos can be viewed on devices including
Apple TV and the
iPhone. A
TiVo service update in July 2008 allowed the
system to search and play YouTube videos. In January 2009, YouTube
launched "YouTube for TV", a version of the website tailored for
set-top boxes and other TV-based media devices with web browsers,
initially allowing its videos to be viewed on the
PlayStation 3 and
Wii
video game consoles. In June
2009, YouTube XL was introduced, which has a simplified interface
designed for viewing on a standard television screen.
Localization
On June 19, 2007,
Google CEO Eric
E. Schmidt was
in Paris
to launch
the new localization
system. The entire interface of the website is now available
with localized versions in 22 countries:
The YouTube interface suggests which local version should be chosen
based on the
IP address of the user. In
some cases, the message "This video is not available in your
country" may appear due to copyright restrictions or inappropriate
content.
Plans for
YouTube to create a local version in Turkey have run
into problems, since the Turkish authorities asked YouTube to set
up an office in Turkey, which would be subject to Turkish
law. YouTube says that it has no intention of doing this,
and that its videos are not subject to Turkish law. Turkish
authorities have expressed concerns that YouTube has been used to
post videos insulting to
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and some
material offensive to
Muslims.
In March
2009, a dispute between YouTube and the British royalty collection agency PRS for Music led to premium music videos
being blocked for YouTube users in the United Kingdom
. The removal of videos posted by the major
record companies occurred after failure to reach agreement on a
licensing deal. The dispute was resolved in September 2009.
In April
2009, a similar dispute led to the removal of premium music videos
for users in Germany
.
See also
References
Further reading
- Lacy, Sarah: The Stories of Facebook, YouTube and MySpace:
The People, the Hype and the Deals Behind the Giants of Web
2.0 (2008) ISBN 978-1854584533
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