Youtube: The silence is deafening
Feb 5th, 2009 by Casey
Roughly twenty eight thousand one hundred videos have been silenced. Silence can show a lack of response that reveals something significant, such as disapproval or a lack of enthusiasm. This silence however is the response.
YouTube has had its copyright issues, that is nothing new. The latest approach to appeasing copyright holders is to turn off the sound on the offending videos. These videos are automatically flagged by the automated systems and the sound is disabled. This automatic flagging that the copyright holders have demanded is creating new issues including recent news including girls singing Christmas carols and music labels ironically flagging their own material. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
Think about the number: twenty eight thousand one hundred videos. That number includes many family birthday videos with music in the background, kids enjoying some snow and people generally celebrating and mourning life itself.
Regardless of who is at fault here (RIAA & MPAA) the users are the ones that are getting hurt and YouTube is the one that will end up with the bad name.
Wow that is really sad regarding the memorial video. This seems like a pr disaster waiting to happen.
I think Youtube may be doing this just to show how stupid the labels are. The only way they have any leverage is if the users get mad and demand that the labels change their ways.
A good backlash is what is needed. Hopefully Google will stoke this fire.
This is crazy. Way to punish your customers.
That is a lot of videos! I would be curious to see how many videos per user on average gets flagged and silenced.