YouTube Sucks

YouTube Sucks

Well, after a lot of deliberations I have decided to continue with this MP3 Music Video Blog. You may have noticed that there haven't been any new posts for a month or so, this is due solely to the corporate cocksuckers at YouTube.

My original YouTube account was closed down to, “Inappropriate Content”. What was highly inappropriate you may ask, well it all started when I uploaded a music video of Tenacious-D's, “Fuck Her Gently”. And before you ask, no it wasn't the lyrics or the title which caused offence.

Now, you may or may not have seen the video, it was created by the people at Spumco. You may know them as the creators of such gems as, “Ren & Stimpy”. Anyway I uploaded the video which features an ANIMATED female of the species with a sort of bra top on. This prompted much debate from many viewers enquiring as to the original video which apparently features the same character minus the bra top. So after a bit of research I located and uploaded the video, which resulted in the account being closed down within three days or so, citing inappropriate content.

Watch Tenacious-D, "Fuck Her Gently"

NO PRIOR WARNING, NO LAST CHANCE SALOON. NOT SUSPENDED BUT REMOVED COMPLETELY, LEAVING NO TRACE!!

To say I was flabbergasted is putting it mildly, this was no animated porn sequence you must understand, merely a briefly ANIMATED glimpse of a nipple!!! So after this I started uploading to another YouTube account that I ALREADY had created. Also the original account that was deleted had over 200 videos on it, NONE OF WHICH HAD CAUSED ANY VIOLATIONS TO YOUTUBE POLICIES, well none enough to have any of them removed.

This set me thinking about the old proverb about,”Don't put all of your eggs in one basket.” So with this in mind I proceeded to open a few YouTube accounts with a limit of 75 videos or so in each account. With the worst case scenario being that if one was closed I could upload the videos again within two to three days. I also feel that I must point out that this Mp3 Music Video Blog only has 180 or so posts, which of course equals a maximum of 200 or so videos. As the occasional post has more than one video link and quite a few having none.

So a lot of the videos were uploaded for the YouTube community as a whole, rather than just so I could show the videos on this website. They were nearly all good quality, with many rarities and incredibly hard to find clips being included. As well of course as videos which I personally found pleasing and/or satisfying.

NOT ONE OF THESE VIDEOS HAD OR HAS EVER BEEN FLAGGED AS INAPPROPRIATE OR ADULT CONTENT!!

And for all I say that some of these videos were hard to find, NOT ONE OF THEM WAS UNIQUE TO YOUTUBE. By that I mean that they already existed (and indeed still exist) on YouTube, with the users apparently experiencing no policy violation problems.

Now of course I realised that with the Google takeover some of these videos might be removed, but nothing prepared me for what ensued. Within the space of about 7 to 10 days, every account I owned on YouTube was systematically deleted. This totalled well over 600 or so videos and many laborious hours spent locating and uploading the videos. Below is a few of the accounts that were deleted, please feel free to click on the links as you will find fuck all but a confirmation of the double standards and narrow minded bureaucracy of which I speak.

• http://www.youtube.com/user/mp3easy
• http://www.youtube.com/user/mp3easyII
• http://www.youtube.com/user/mp3easydotcom2
• http://www.youtube.com/user/easymp3II
• http://www.youtube.com/user/easymp3
• http://www.youtube.com/user/drdil
  

And even more frustratingly, especially for a, “Community based website” such as YouTube professes to be, the customer support (and I use the term support loosely) is completely non-existent. Not since the days of Ebay's cut and paste responses to even the simplest of questions have I ever came across such an automated pile of absolute bullshit. Support should be substituted for vindictive, bone-idle ignorance of the most despicable fashion. Every email I have ever sent YouTube regarding any deleted account has been met with EXACTLY the same response, this includes emails to several different departments and countless (in)different people!!

In retrospect I can only surmise that either my website was being monitored to ensure the successful deletion of all of the accounts but probably more realistically my I.P. address was logged and every subsequent video uploaded from that address was linked to an account and was then shut down.

Now I know a lot of you will think that I only have myself to blame, but come on people, the only reason that YouTube became so popular in the first place was the viewing of copyrighted material. As much as YouTube may deny this, any body who (like myself) was around in the early days of YouTube know this to be a fact.

Post Google-acquisition YouTube however is a different kettle of fish completely. Recently we have seen a crackdown on copyrighted videos on their site ranging from rapid removal of movies, to TV shows to short TV clips and adverts etc. With syndicates consisting of creators of original copyrighted material demanding the removal of thousands of videos at once.

But for the majority of computer users, video sharing starts and stops with the now flawed YouTube. However there is an increasingly number of similar sites cropping up allowing for all sorts of videos to be uploaded, no doubt these will eventually become consistent with the DMCA rulings, but more importantly YouTube is no longer the only medium available for people wishing to share their favourite clips of whatever it is that they want to share.

Don't get me wrong I still occasionally use YouTube as I am part of a couple of syndicates which still exclusively use the site, and also if all else fails I will quite happily link to another users video if it pertains to a Blog post which previously linked to a video in one of my deleted accounts. But I am also diversifying and find myself increasingly using video share sites other than YouTube. All of which have little flaws but none are as fundamentally flawed as YouTube. For example I was a subscriber to a female user from the USA who was in the process of uploading all of the Family Guy episodes, now I personally told her to either make the videos private or not to call them by their full titles as account closure was positively imminent. And also a lot of other subscribers to this particular channel were warning her via comments on her channel.

When YouTube finally did strike they removed upwards of about 20 FULL EPISODES of Family Guy. But the account wasn't disabled or even suspended, which I must admit I was pleased about as it showed a leaning to a more understanding YouTube. Of course this was before they started deleting my accounts with no explanation and for much less obvious copyright infringements.

My main gripe was that I was given no prior warning and no explanation is or was forthcoming. Some of my videos had honours and some had upwards of 1 million views with many having being designated as favourites (by other YouTube users) over a thousand times.

But that's enough of me and my personal axe grinding, now I will list a few reasons (other than copyright infringement) of why I think YouTube needs to get their shit together.

• Firstly it is the most outage prone Top Ten (sometimes Top Five – depending on when you view the statistics) web property I have ever had the misfortune to frequent.


• Also, what happened to Google sorting out the search facilities, the acquisition was quite a while ago now, maybes it's because the self-proclaimed, “King Of Search Engines” doesn't want to directly compete with their own search facilities of Google Video just yet, where incidentally you can search by video duration as well as several other useful and defining parameters.


• Also, I have on occasion waited for nearly 48 hours (after initial upload) for a five minute video clip to become viewable, where as several other video share sites allow you to view your uploads almost instantly.


• Also, and this is more true of just lately I have encountered problems with the video just taking too long to download to my PC which means that you get the increasingly annoying stop/start of the video you are watching, often making the video just plain unwatchable.


• What the fuck is going on with capping non-director accounts videos to a maximum of 10 minutes. (It's actually something like 10 minutes and 50 something seconds) but this still remains one of the only video share sites to incorporate this policy. YouTube claims that the director accounts are exclusively for user created content, but if you check it out, nearly all of the director accounts upload copyrighted material such as documentaries etc. And the people who upload genuine user created contented rarely if ever hit the ten minute mark.


• Back to the search issue again, the actual indexing of videos is a joke, with sometimes the most recent video being shown was uploaded more than 24 hours ago, yet if you check again later you will find that there was in fact a multitude of clips uploaded, they just hadn't been indexed.


• Another problem is that if you set your video to private, yet you still want it to be embedded, it's just not possible. Meaning that you can share it with your contacts list but not show it on your own website without making the video public on YouTube.

I could go on and on, but like I say I just have an axe to grind and I feel my sharpening stone has been reduced to nothing more than a pebble!!