I'm often late to the game but I usually end up with a decent seat (I guess I absorbed something all those times My father bribed Yankee Stadium ushers to let us move down to the box seats).
youtube has got My attention. For those as behind the curve as I am, youtube is like a video version of Photobucket. You sign up (free), then upload your videos.
Browsing around youtube you find all sorts of things. Video blogs, ridiculous stunts, Diet Coke and Mentos (go see for yourself), rants, people dancing, people acting stupid, clips from TV shows, music videos, bondage clips, sporting events, people praising their friends and dissing their rivals, politcial opinions, and on and on and on. And it's all searchable (a mixed blessing since many uploaders have added lots of non-apropos tags, so most searches are going to return a lot of irrelevant results).
The qaulity (picture quality and content quality) varies wildly of course. There are videos shot from cell phones, digital cameras, webcams, camcorders, TV captures. And, as in any unrestricted marketplace of creativity, there are plenty of people whose lack of anything meaningful to say doesn't stop them from putting it out there. There are youtube stars, youtube groupies, youtube addicts, youtube haters, and everything in between. I've seen stupid 3-second clips of people laughing like idiots, as in "I can't belive we're doing this!" But I've also seen a brilliant adaptation of Van Halen's "Right Now" video, based on anime characters. I've seen sophmoric excuses to say dirty words on the internet, but I've seen some very talented video manipulations, too, people showing real talent and creativity.
No discussion of this would be complete with mention of the "c" word. (That's copyright -- get your minds out of the gutter! Sheesh!) From what I gather, yuotube doesn't prevent you from uploading something that might be subject to copyright. But if/when the rights holder says take it down, they take it down. Simple enough. And what I'm hoping happens is that commercial interests see that there is more value to their material being out there on youtube and being seen for "free" then there is in enforcing a copyright for the sake of enforcing it. Case in point -- the other night I watched the full-length version of the video of "Girls on Film" by Duran Duran on youtube. Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't thought about Duran Duran in a very long time. I'm not rushing out to order a Duran Duran CD from Amazon or to buy some tracks from Napster or iTunes, but I'm a lot more likely to than I was two days ago.
Now, as for the other "c" words (re-engage those dirty minds). From what I can tell there is no actual porn on youtube, but there are some pretty decent bondage clips . . . foot and boot worship clips, some femdom videos, and a lots of various fetish clips. And how knows what else, really? I've only begun to scratch the surface of search terms I might try. (To access videos that have been flagged as mature content, you do have to sign up, but the signup requires no personal information other than a date of birth (hint: don't you use your real one, just make sure it makes you old enough to watch adult stuff)).
youtube isn't unique, I know. There is google video and I'm sure lots of other similar sites. I'm not endorsing youtube and have no affiliation with any of their advertisers. youtube just happens to be the site that was mentioned to Me in the context of this phenomenon and it's where I've been looking.
I see youtube as potentially furthering a slowly but steadily building revolution -- the changeover from passive viewing, where one consumes content created by well-financed entities and distributed in proprietary fashion by other well-financed entities, to a more active scenario in which content creation and distribution become one integrated low-level acitivity. I can make a video and 30 minutes from now it can be viewable, theoeretically, by millions of people without regard to where they live or who their cable company is (or isn't). There will be fits and starts and for sure there is a lot of garbage out there -- but again, it's slowly getting to the point where "amateur" content can approach professional production values, and with no advertisers to please/worry about, no censors, and no dsitribution network to be beholden to, the sky's the limit. The disintermediated future looks bright indeed.
The following is the tribute to "Right Now" video I mentined above. Brilliant work. Kudos to the creators of it and to youtube.
Oh. Did I forget to mention that youtube makes it really easy to embed video clips in your blog/website?
3 comments:
nice post Lenora. Thanks for reminding me of youtube last week.
today, in the wall street journal, an article announced taht other sites are now paying people to put their videos up on them, rather than youtube.
I agree completely with Your assessment of the shift in production/viewing, as You well know.
Now, even youtube is more valuable, thanks to the mindless competitive actions of some also-ran sites.
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