Fact: YouTube is one of the most popular websites for media these days. You can find anything from backyard science experiments to TV ads to hilarious videos like William Shatner (Captain Kirk from Star Trek) singing to George Lucas (Star Wars creator). I would post a link to that Shatner video, but it's got a USA television network logo in the corner and you'll read in a minute why that makes me a little wary.
However popular YouTube is getting, there seems to be one problem: Copyright laws are often not observed. I read an article on Broadcasting & Cable's website which states that most students don't understand copyright laws in regards to the content they upload to sites like YouTube, MySpace or Facebook.
I don't completely blame our generation for misunderstanding. I read the Fair Use Doctrine on the U.S. government's copyright website, and it is definitely a little hard to make sense of what/how much of a copyrighted unit can be used by someone other than the one holding the copyright before it is considered copyright infringement (whew, that's a mouthful). From what I gather, posting videos like television episodes, movies, music videos and news broadcastings is illegal. Basically, if you haven't made the video, you don't have permission to post it. I remember one time when I watched an episode from the TV show Mythbusters on YouTube. I went back to watch it again about a week later and I couldn't find it; it had been removed due to copyright infringement.
That being said, it is just a little ironic that the tagline of YouTube is "Broadcast Yourself," but frequently we post videos that aren't ours because they're funny or interesting, and thereby break copyright laws without necessarily meaning to. It seems like, with the progression of technology and informational exchange trends, we need some new and very clear insight on the matter.
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