Heavyweight Comp Skills Champion: Copyright Question: Youtube

In class this past Tuesday, we received an informational lecture on copyright infringement. One very interesting case which I had yet to fully analyze myself was the question of copyright infringement that Youtube was hypothetically doing. They have thousands (tens of thousands, maybe) of illegally copied and uploaded videos on their site. Anyone can see these videos from anywhere in the world and it provides what could possibly be a major hub for video piracy (anyone with video recording software could pirate and redistribute more copies for profit, if they were so inclined). But on the other hand, Youtube is a great tool to share videos than are legal too and, quite unlike the case with Napster, they have space between themselves and the illegal acts made on their site. Since they have tools implemented to aid against illegal uploading and do not do anything that blatantly breaks the law, they have a good gray area cushion on which to sit. I personally side with Youtube. Some of the super-rich artists have a slice of their profits taken away and have it given back to the people of the world! The horror!! I hope they'll live. Poor Lady Gaga, T.I., Lil' Wayne (young moolah, babay?), Michael Jackson's estate, etc.. Now they only get 150 days out of the year for vacation instead of 200. Plus, Youtube provides a means in which starting, struggling artists from anywhere in the world can post their creations online to potentially be viewed by millions (billions, now?) of people.

Yeah, I side with Youtube on this one.