Tag Archives: YouTube
This is why we can’t have nice things
As you can see in my previous post, I have a new PC in the office. This involves logging back in to all my accounts and setting things up just the way I like them, which can take a significant amount of time if you happen to be particular about it, which I am.
One of the things I did was copy my music library over to the second hard drive so i can have access to it here. I don’t use it all that much, I tend to rely on YouTube more often (although I’m not sure why when I have local copies), but that’s how it is.
Anyway, I decided to fire up Groove, a service I have never used before as that is what Windows 10 wanted my music player to be, and as I was scrolling through my list I found the late, great John Denver’s hit “Country Roads, Take Me Home.”
That sounded good, so I fired it up. Except I couldn’t play the song, and Bam! I was hit in the face with why I don’t like digital distribution and have gone so far as to set up my own personal Netflix. To explain what happened, have a look at this picture:
8K video on YouTube
8K has been around for a while now, I’ve seen huge (108″) 8K displays at E3 for three years running. Even so, we’re too busy focusing on 4K these days, and two versions of 4K at that – true 4K (4096 x 2160) and UHD (3840 x 2160), although no TV you can by in a store is true 4K, that’s a cinema standard. *All* TVs that claim to be 4K are actually UHD.
Yet technology marches on, and just as we are seeing the very early development of new technologies such as quantum dot displays, so are we seeing the early attempts to move past 4K resolution towards an 8K consumer standard.
YouTube turns 10 years old today
YouTube, founded by ex-PayPal employees, turns 10 years old today. In case you underestimate the importance of YouTube, it has created celebrities (For example, Justin Bieber was discovered in YouTube videos), empires out of teengaers, the President of the United States uses it, and according to YouTube’s own statistics page, 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute (think about that).
After being founded, it only took two years for Google to buy it out for almost $2 billion, and it is now the de facto video service on the web. It is one of the reasons we all discovered we had to get rid of Flash and adopt the HTML5 standard which is much more secure and doesn’t require third-party software to play videos in a browser. Remember the days of the QuickTime player, or – shudder – RealPlayer?
Anyway, if you’re interested, here is the very first video ever uploaded to YouTube, entitled “Me at the Zoo.” Don’t expect to be blown away, it’s more historical oddity than anything else, but a very important one nonetheless.
Victory!
Those of you who were following this blog in the fall 2014 semester may remember that when I uploaded an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force to YouTube over the Thanksgiving break, I was immediately notified by YouTube and Cartoon Network that the video had been taken down, that I had committed a copyright violation, was threatened with a lawsuit six different times, had to attend ‘copyright school,’ and had severe restrictions placed on the account, restrictions that would all but negate its utility as a pedagogical tool. If you’d like to be brought up to speed, you can read my original post complete with fully-documented screenshots about the ordeal at this link. It’s scary stuff, worth a read.
I was given only 200 characters in which to submit my rebuttal, which I did to both YouTube *and* Cartoon Network (the owners of Aqua Teen Hunger Force), explaining the upload was covered by fair use doctrine, that it was for educational as well as entertainment value, and that it presented topics we discuss in class in a novel way that I felt would engage students. I indicated the video did not need to be reinstated, but the restrictions should be lifted as they were unreasonably punitive.
A few weeks went by, I didn’t hear anything, so I resubmitted my appeal and indicated I would escalate (meaning consider legal action) if I didn’t get a response.
Well guess what! I just received an email from YouTube that states the following:
New YouTube Copyright Counter Notification
Fri 1/9/2015 6:06 PMTo:
Darren Denenberg;Hello,In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we’ve completed processing your counter-notification regarding these video(s):
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOARq9kIwPM
This content has been restored unless you have deleted the video(s). Your account will not be penalized.
Regards,
The YouTube Legal Support Team
Not bad! A victory for the little guy, and vindication of my intent and purpose for uploading the video in the first place. Now, to upload Star Wars in its entirety.
I kid, I kid. (Or do I?)
Oh no you don’t (Updated – it gets worse, then slightly better)
Another Thanksgiving-related post, and my first ever take down notice! Last Thursday, since it was turkey-day, and since we talk about robots in class, and since Carl Brutananadilewski was our mascot for the chapter on e-commerce, I thought I would post the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode titled ‘The Dressing.’
This episode revolves around a robot turkey who comes from the future to take Carl, who it turns out is a hyper-evolved chicken from the future, back to save the robot turkeys from annihilation by their chicken overlords. Or something like that. Honestly, it’s a little hard to follow
In order to make it easy to embed in a post, I uploaded it to YouTube who instantly informed me that even though I had set the video to ‘Unlisted,’ it contained copyrighted material and may be in violation of copyrights.
Random-stuff-I-Found-Friday!
As I said in my previous post, I love the history of technology as much as as, and in some cases even more, than the present; I consider myself quite the historian when it comes to tech. It’s why I still have a working Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and Apple IIe in my house. So what could be better than combining a vintage aesthetic with modern technology?
Some of you might have seen these before, they’ve been around for about a year, but I just rediscovered them this week. They are vintage advertisements for modern technologies (services, really, but that’s an issue of semantics). You can see Skype, Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook in all their retro glory. Some of the faux technologies in these posters actually did have real-life dopplegangers such as the video phone from 1964. These are great posters, and do an outstanding job of contrasting what was with what is. You can see the posters below.
