Copyright lawsuits have become commonplace for YouTube.

People post videos witho ut the right to do so, leaving YouTube to clean up the mess before the video-sha ring site finds itself embroiled in yet another, much larger, legal mess. Some, like Brian Banner, a Washington, D.C., attorney who specializes in copyright law , believe that YouTube may be a bit lax up front. He says: "Service providers li ke YouTube don't want to exercise any control. They just want to provide a servi ce without verifying what the content is." Lately, though, YouTube has found its elf facing a whole new slew of legal issues beyond copyright, which may force th e site to take control over its content. This past August in Thailand, Thai censors finally lifted a 5-month, countrywide YouTube ban. The censors were originally put in place because some material pos ted on the site was deemed insulting to the Thai king. The ban was lifted on a c onditional basis. If Thai censors find a video on YouTube that they believe to b e inappropriate per Thai standards, the censors will notify YouTube, and if YouT ube agrees that the material is against Thai law, YouTube will block said materi al from Thai viewers. YouTube recently received hundreds of complaints from a German government agency about posted videos that included Nazi imagery and promoted racism. YouTube res ponded by removing all of the objectionable videos from its site, rather than on ly blocking German viewers' access. Here in the United States, where "questionable" content surrounds us on a near-c onstant basis, one might think that copyright laws are the extent of YouTube's w oes. Americans, after all, have the First Amendment, which protects us from cens orship and allows us to freely express our beliefs, no matter how unpopular they may be. What the First Amendment fails to do, however, is protect us from ourse lves. Take the Columbus, Ohio, cop, for example, whose YouTube video post resulted in her reassignment. In August, Susan Purtee, a 15-year veteran of the Columbus pol ice force, was seen on YouTube blaming the Jewish population for problems in the United States. Following the incident, Purtee was reassigned to a non-enforceme nt position, and Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman commented, "While we respect the right of free speech, we also demand that every officer meet the highest standa rd of conduct on and off the job." Also in August, an unnamed 19-year-old boy was arrested after allegedly posting a YouTube video of himself driving at speeds topping 140 mph. Another YouTube vi deo left a group of teenagers answering authorities' questions after a clip show ing the teens trespassing in an old, rundown mill was posted on YouTube. According to Banner, "The First Amendment is obviously more important than YouTu be or anything else on the internet. People claim their right to free speech und er the First Amendment, but those rights are limited." Once you post racist rant s or illegal actions on YouTube for all to see, it then becomes an issue of self -incrimination. If you post a video of yourself doing something wrong, it makes denial pretty difficult. In fact, the video could quickly become the most damnin g piece of evidence in the case against you. Some of these problems arise from the myth of online anonymity. People create us er names on YouTube or bump up their privacy settings on MySpace and then assume that they are hidden behind some mysterious, anonymous cloak of protection. How ever, the truth is that wherever you go and whatever you do during your online j ourneys, you leave a trail. YouTube encourages its users to broadcast themselves, but in light of this new w ave of litigation, it might not hurt to exercise some inhibition before doing so . The question, however, is if YouTube needs to build inhibitors--content regula tion mechanisms--into its network to protect itself . . . and maybe even protect us from ourselves.

50 YouTube Facts & Figures 1. YouTube was created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005 who were all employees of Paypal 2. YouTube was initially funded by bonuses received following the eBay buyout of PayPal 3. The founding trio didnt come up with the YouTube concept straight away. L egend has it that YouTube began life as a video dating site dubbed Tune In Hook U p, said to be influenced by HotorNot. The three ultimately decided not to go that route 4. The inspiration for YouTube as we know it today is credited to two diffe rent events. The first was Karims inability to find footage online of Janet Jacks ons wardrobe malfunction, and the second when Hurley and Chen were unable to share video footage of a dinner party due to e-mail attachment limitations 5. The domain name YouTube.com was registered on Valentines Day in 2005 6. The domain name caused a huge misunderstanding for Universal Tube & Roll form Equipment. Its company domain, utube.com, was overwhelmed with traffic from p eople that tried to spell the video sites name phonetically 7. The first video on YouTube is of one of the co-founders Jawed Karim talk ing about elephants trunks titled Me at the Zoo shot at the San Diego Zoo. 8. The first video has received over 4.8 million views 9. Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in November 2006 10. Google serves over 6 times more videos than its next closest competitor according to Nielsen 11. Googles auto speech recognition technology translates 51 languages includ ing captions 12. The longest Video ever on YouTube is 48 hours (2 days!) 13. The how to video category is the fastest growing vertical on YouTube 14. YouTube has 490 million users worldwide (unique visitors per month) 15. It generates an estimated 92 billion page views each month. 16. The average YouTube user visits the site 14 times per month 17. The average user spends an average of 25 minutes on the site each time t hey visit. 18. The average user spends 5 hours and 50 minutes per month (not as much as Facebook) 19. Together, we spend 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month. Thats 326,294 years. 20. More than 13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010 and 35 hou rs of video are uploaded every minute. 21. The amount of video uploaded in 2010 is the equivalent of 150,000+ fulllength movies in theaters each week 22. More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the 3 major US network s created in 60 years 23. 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US 24. YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages 25. YouTubes demographic is broad: 18-54 years old 26. YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010 27. They have signed over 10,000 advertising partners to date, including Dis ney, Turner, Univision and Channel 4 and Channel 5 28. Hundreds of partners are making six figures a year 29. There are over 7,000 hours of full-length movies and shows on YouTube 30. YouTube is monetizing over 2 billion video views per week globally 31. 94 of AdAges Top 100 advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and the Go ogle Display Network 32. The number of advertisers using display ads on YouTube increased by 1,00 0% in the last year 33. YouTube has more HD content than any other online video site 34. 10% of YouTubes videos are available in HD 35. Automated Content ID (which detects duplicate content to prevent copyrig ht infringements) scans over 100 years of video every day 36. More than 1000 partners are using Content ID, including every major US n

etwork broadcaster, movie studio and record label 37. Over a third of YouTubes total monetized views come from Content ID 38. Over 4 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one soc ial network 39. An AutoShared Tweet results in 6 new youtube.com sessions 40. Over 5 million people have found and subscribed to at least one friend o n YouTube using friend-finding tools 41. Millions of subscriptions happen each day. Subscriptions allow you to co nnect with someone youre interested inwhether its a friend, or the NBAand keep up on their activity on the site. 42. Users like Machinima, MysteryGuitarMan, Fred, collegehumor, and Universa lMusicGroup have millions of subscribers 43. More than 50% of videos on YouTube have been rated or include comments f rom the community 44. Millions of videos are favorited every day 45. YouTube mobile gets over 100 million views a day 46. The YouTube player is embedded across tens of millions of websites 47. YouTube says that on average there are more than 400 tweets per minute c ontaining a YouTube link 48. The most watched video (that is not a music video) is Charlie Bit My Fing er with currently 317 million views 49. The most watched music video is Justin Biebers Baby which currently has ove r 536 million views 50. In 2009 the US Congress and President YouTube channels were launched