VIPなどで面白かったニュースコミュの YouTube日本からのアクセス規制？

YouTube CEO Hails ‘Birth of a New Clip Culture’
by Mark Glaser, 2:29PM
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There is a simple truth about video-sharing site YouTube, and an enigma. The simple truth is that this web startup has bottled up the viral video idea and made it eminently drinkable by anyone — you go to the site, find the video clip you want to watch, and, voila! you’re watching it in seconds. And if you want to upload and share your own videos, the process is also very straightforward and free of charge.

But the enigma is how YouTube will profit on its own spectacular popularity. Julie Supan, senior director of marketing for YouTube, said the site now serves up 35 million videos per day, and users upload 35,000 videos per day, with 100 million page views per day. These are massive numbers for a site that’s not even a year old yet.

But so far, the only hint of a way this startup will make money is by making deals with media companies such as MTV2 and E! Entertainment Television to help promote their offerings with video clips. Of course, YouTube could add advertisements before each clip is shown, but that would change the user experience and would require advertisers to feel comfortable with the strange brew of material there.

With TV networks asking for copyrighted material to be pulled off YouTube, the site started to get noticed in the press, and a Google News search brings up 714 recent stories. Those include Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times proclaiming that “skinny guys in moppy hair in modest houses” are making the most popular YouTube videos.

Heather Svokos of the Fort Star Telegram explains the site’s popularity thusly: “It was a smart idea that caught a wave at the right time, and now it’s giddily feeding a few of our most human cravings: the urge to share, connect, and to see it for ourselves.”

Most of what Svokos recommends as her favorite clips on YouTube — and links to from her article — are likely copyright violations. As I warned when I first wrote about YouTube’s videos shot by American soldiers in Iraq, copyright infringements are impossible to totally eliminate. For each one YouTube pulls down, another dozen could sprout up. YouTube has tried to limit the longer form violations with a 10-minute limit to videos, and puts the burden on content owners to ferret out violations and notify the site.

So the balancing act continues, with YouTube trying to meet the needs and tastes of its vast audience of clip junkies, while making deals with media companies for professional clips. The small company, based in San Mateo, Calif., down the peninsula from San Francisco, has just 23 employees but will likely have to grow more over time to meet its growing audience and all their content.

I sent along my five big questions for Chad Hurley, the CEO of YouTube and a co-founder. The following are his unedited responses via email.

Q: What’s your longer term vision for YouTube? A bigger MySpace-like community with more social networking, or a stronger video-feature focus with mash-ups and the like?

Chad Hurley: Our vision is to build the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.

It is the birth of a new clip culture. There is a complete shift happening in digital media entertainment and users are now in control of what they watch and when they watch it. At YouTube, we are seeing an evolution of entertainment and media distribution — where the audience is now in control more than ever.

We do plan to incorporate more customized features over the coming months so that members can personalize their profiles and how they engage with the content on our site. We listen to our users as we develop new features because it is their feedback and insight that has helped us build the community.

Q: There are a lot of video-sharing sites online, so how do you explain the huge success of YouTube?

Hurley: It’s about user choice and we are the people’s choice — our success lies in the fact that we are democratizing the entertainment experience and creating a community for people to interact with video. Also, YouTube has made video sharing easier than anyone else. Members can be uploading and sharing video within minutes of wandering onto the site.

Q: YouTube’s motto is “Broadcast Yourself.” If this is about a digital media revolution where everyone can be the star, why make deals for Big Media content (E!, MTV2) for use in YouTube?

Hurley: YouTube is a stage for everyone. With this (cultural) shift happening in digital media entertainment and a new clip culture evolving, TV networks and other professional content creators, such as movie studios and record labels, have an opportunity to promote their programs or new records through YouTube. And professional content is absolutely of interest with our viewers — so long as it is entertaining and short-form. Clips like Nike, E!’s Cybersmack clips, and movie previews like the “Scary Movie 4” trailer are all very popular with viewers. Because it is a democracy, users decide what is popular and determine what they are going to share with others.

Q: Please explain your business model, and how it might adversely affect the grassroots community that has sprouted up at YouTube.

Hurley: It will be an advertising-based model. We are exploring ways to serve up relevant advertising that will benefit the viewing experience since we know a lot about each of the videos based on how they are tagged. We have been moving cautiously to ensure we don’t disrupt the goodness of the community. But at the end of the day it’s the viewers that decide what is entertaining whether it be user-generated content or professionally produced videos — our community is still in control and will decide what rises to the top.

Q: When it comes to copyright violations and inappropriate material, how much can you filter technologically, and how much do you depend on users to monitor this?

Hurley: It is the rights holders that alert us to unauthorized videos on the site — through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act notification process. We comply with the DMCA and remove videos when we have knowledge that they are posted by users without permission of the copyright owners. This is what the law requires of us.

In addition, we have developed a number of tools both internal and for rights holders to help us identify unauthorized videos on site. With 35,000 videos uploaded to our site per day, we clearly need content owners to cooperate and alert us of any unauthorized content of which they are aware.

Our policy prohibits inappropriate content on YouTube. Our community understands the rules and effectively polices the site for inappropriate material. The users can flag content that they feel is inappropriate. This combined with our proprietary technology helps us to enforce the rules. We also disable the accounts of repeat offenders for both inappropriate material and copyright violations.

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What do you think? Have you checked out YouTube and other viral video sites, and what did you like about them? Not like? Should content owners and Big Media companies lighten up over copyright issues? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Filed under Digging Deeper, Online Video, TVShift


I like many things about YouTube, especially the near-universal access. Almost everybody has the Flash player, and so people can view videos without having to install the QuickTime or Windows Media players. However, as a home video maker, I hate the reduction in quality that occurs when YouTube transcodes my videos. For example, take a look at this one-minute video I made earlier this year:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ixev6NmGs_0

Now compare that to the version I encoded in QuickTime for iPod:

http://jimthompson.org/media/laredo.html

Anybody who makes a video, even a little one-minute production, puts a lot of painstaking care into getting every little detail just right. It's just heartbreaking to see that damage that YouTube does to a carefully constructed production.

YouTube is a great idea, but it's hard to justify what they do to the quality of uploaded videos.

By Jim Thompson 4:23PM on 04 Apr 06

I agree with Jim, YouTube ravages a content creators video quality. Of course, this contributes to the blazing download speed (SOMETIMES) and thus, universal accesability. However, I hardly believe that "clip culture" is the media revolution. This is just one part an a much larger revolution.

On the note of quality, I will mention that the encoding on the site is indicative of how discerning the YouTube's audience is: not at all. YouTube has a very specific demographic, one that rewards idiocy before quality of content. When the YT CEO says that the users decide what bubbles to the top, I hope he realizes who those users are. What appeals to the 13-year-old kids who flood the polls, might not appeal to a 30-something mother of two. A better content recommendation system is in order.

YouTube can be entertaining, but also, ridiculously time consuming, with a signal-to-noise ration (content AND resolution) that just won't hold up to the HD hungry audience. Thus, it is not THEE revolution, just one of many branches.

By Fraser 7:35AM on 05 Apr 06

I don't think it's necessarily fair to disparage the aesthetic tastes of YouTube viewers just because of compression losses. There's a market for high-quality video, but also one for ANY video of something, or even a poor-quality "preview" if you will, that whets the appetite for a higher-bandwidth experience. It's a little like a cheap TV set where more people can afford to at least see something.

By J.S. Clark 12:32PM on 05 Apr 06

Remember, I said content AND resolution. The two might correlate, maybe not. The fact of the matter is, quality video production is often stanger to the front page of YouTube. This, however, is not the case with the iTunes music store podcast section.

At the time of writing this, I have spied this little gem at the top: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UVgCBKt8hvo

As opposed to iTunes' listing, with Homestarrunner at the top. Followed by Ask a Ninja and Tiki Bar TV.

I don't think there is a contest in terms of production value here.

By Fraser 4:13PM on 05 Apr 06

I think you both have valid points. The quality of the videos on YouTube aren't as good, because of compression issues and such. But how many times have you had to wait a long time for the video to load? It's about speedy universal access.

And what's to stop YouTube from offering a premium service for higher quality videos? It makes a lot of sense for them to start with everything, and then consider ways to serve up better quality in time.

I think the comparison with iTunes video podcasts is apples and oranges. YouTube is a much more open service for any type of video.

By Mark Glaser 4:57PM on 05 Apr 06

Agreed, they are indeed apples to oranges.

By Fraser 7:48PM on 05 Apr 06

This is why I prefer grouper.com. People can watch a compressed preview on the site, and if they want to download the original file, they can do so.


By Sean 5:44PM on 11 Apr 06

Heres what I found: http://zfreez.com/web/Ut.htm
You can download YouTube video from that site.
Unlike all other download service out there, the downloaded files from this site are in .flv format BY DEFAULT so you don't have to rename or change extension or anything. It also named your file according to the clip name at YouTube :)
Give it a shot.

By zfreez 9:44PM on 01 May 06

In reply to your article, Pitbulltv is an online television network that caters to talent in the entertainment business. The network offers original tv series, indy films and more... all Free. The network is also looking for new shows to license from any amatuer to professional.
www.pitbulltv.com

By frank principe 2:01PM on 12 May 06

Hello!I want to send email to Chad Hurley, is there anyone who is so kindly to tell me his e-mail address? Many thanks!

By JanetChen 3:58AM on 16 May 06

All the talk about low content quality is silly. Of course the mediocre floats to the top in a viewer rated environment. It's called a low common denominator and it's what popular media has been about since the beginning.

That said there is fantastically interesting and, I dare say weighty, material being posted in volume. Look for the emergence of spin-off "curated sites" like VIEWTUBE (found this site in an article on "clip culture", in Wikipedia) for a mix of "high" and "low".

Initially I thought that legal challenges would quickly incapacitate Youtube. But it's become clear-due to massive, spontaneous, popular growth, that this is the model for the future.
And viewed a certain way, the low quality flash compression may be a buffer against litigation-Can this possibly erode hdtv or 70 millimeter projection unless people really don't care in the first place?- while this path changes rapidly from ant trail to cobblestone to superhighway .

Economic stratagies will develop around this. It's massive publicity for one thing. So we can hang our chairs on the wall and become a Ludites- and read about people filing tortes in the newspaper-or we can move with this.

Combined with what the youngsters are doing with myspace etc. it's a big, big shift that's occurring.

By Roland 1:10PM on 21 May 06

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とうとう、日本からのアクセスを規制したようです。

YouTubeハリーCEOのインタビュー


──　なぜ日本からのアクセスに迷惑しているのか？

ハリーCEO「簡単に言えば『お金を生み出さない』ということだ。日本からのアクセスは全体の４０％に達しているのに、 日本人の有料会員は、３％以下だ」

ハリーCEO「さらに、『非』英語コンテンツの増加は、本来のアメリカマーケットにとって有害になってきている」


──　本当に規制するのか？

ハリーCEO「今はどちらとも言えない。社内で案が出ているだけだ。数日中に規制をする可能性もある。 日本とアメリカをつなぐ回線が非常に太いため、アメリカ国内のトラッフィクを阻害している。 早急に対策しないと、我々に利益をもたらすメインマーケットであるアメリカの顧客を逃す事に なりかねないという危機感はある」


――　日本人利用者は迷惑か

ハリーCEO「ハッキリ言ってしまえば迷惑。アメリカでは著作権に関する法律が厳しく、 日本のテレビ番組やアニメーションをアップロードする利用者には困っている。 それに加え、英語サイトなので宣伝効果にもならない。 日本からのアクセスを規制する必要が出てきた。


――　楽しみにしている日本人利用者もいるが？

ハリーCEO「日本人は死んだ魚のように岸に押し寄せてきた。まるで海岸を埋めつくす死んだ魚のようだ」


YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/

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とりあえず、また解除された模様。