YouTube returns to Thailand after it agrees to censorship

So the web is not as all-powerful as we thought it would be. After Google and Yahoo changed their policies to agree to censorship in China, and then Second Life buckled down to US pressure and removed gambling from the online game, YouTube agreed to some amount of censorship and remove some videos that were critical of the country's highly regarded king. This agreement related to existing videos and new ones as well, which means extra overhead for YouTube as they will to review all videos referred to them by Thailand and remove the ones deemed insulting to the King:

Thai censors lifted their ban Friday after five months of blocking the online video site because it had carried material seen as insulting to the country's highly venerated king. The site's management has agreed to block any future clips that are deemed offensive to Thai culture or that violate Thai law, said Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the minister of information and communications technology.
Sitthichai said the agreement with YouTube — a site that allows people to post and share video clips — had been reached some time ago, but that there had been technical problems in implementing it. "Any clip that we think is illegal, we will inform YouTube and YouTube will have a look independently," he said. "If YouTube agrees that it is illegal for Thailand or against Thai culture, they will block it from viewers in Thailand."

Thailand has laws that prohibit any disrespect of the King, and people have been penalized in the past. However, there is no difference now if Iranian and Saudi Arabians censors prohibit a lot of videos that are either disrespectful of the Prophet or show too much skin. In addition, since China has an unstated law that any mention of democracy or openness is equivalent to sedition and must be punished, they must be justified in their attempts to censor what all people can read.

iPhone supporting YouTube, but not Flash

Flash Videos, the video format owned by Adobe, got a shock due to 2 major reasons. First, it seems that Apple will not use the Flash player on the iPhone, and then YouTube declared that it will re-encode its videos in the H.264 video format. YouTube's videos were earlier being encoded as Flash Video, a big support for the Flash Video format. That now seems to have gone.
Adobe will need to spend some effort on figuring how to make sure that such things are not repeated; even if this was due to a business conflict between Apple and Adobe, it has made life somewhat more difficult for Flash and Flash Video. The Flash Player now has to battle fears of being slow on the mobile platform, and Adobe needs to trumpet up the success of Flash Video with other broadcasters. Refer this story:

Just as the Apple TV is now YouTube compatible thanks to the H.264 format that YouTube’s video collection is being re-encoded with, so too is the iPhone able to display YouTube’s H.264 videos thanks to a special player iPhone users will see when visiting YouTube’s site.
Currently only 10,000 of YouTube’s clips have been converted thus far, but YouTube is promising to have their entire collection progressively re-encoded over the next few weeks and months, ensuring a steady stream of new videos for iPhone users who are also YouTube fanatics.
With the iPhone only a few days away, revelations of improved battery life and an improved screen have only added to the iHype over the past few days. The YouTube announcement has sent the hype meter off the scale once again.

And of course, with the projected release date of the iPhone only a few days away (29th June), the Apple PR machinery will be going all out to have the device written about widely every day, such that it remains on total recall; and there are incredible first week sales that make this the device to own for those not yet bought on.
Anyhow, back to Flash. Adobe needs to make sure that the Flash Player does not develop a reputation of being memory-hogging or battery draining on mobile devices, that will be a horrible reputation.

EMI signs deal with YouTube

YouTube has managed to sign a deal with another music company for letting YouTube users access songs and videos from the catalog of EMI. With this, YouTube has now managed to sign a deal with all major music companies - EMI, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Entertainment. The deal with EMI will allow users to access music and videos, and even allow them to incorporate some of these elements in their own content.
Details of the deal in terms of financial compensation to EMI is not available. However, YouTube is still facing a major lawsuit on behalf of other videos on their site, with several companies such as Viacom, The English Premier League, etc having files lawsuits against Google for infringing their copyright. This lawsuit is being fought by Google on the grounds that they are not knowingly infringing piracy, and that YouTube is just a platform, protected by the law. It could be very much possible that Google will also claim that there are a number of companies who have signed deals with YouTube, and that the companies who have filed the lawsuit are the ones who could not reach an agreement. The market does not seem to worry about the lawsuit too much, with Google's share going above $500.

Google blasts Viacom over lawsuit

Viacom had filed a $1 billion lawsuit with Google, alleging that YouTube, owned by Google was indulging in massive intentional copyright infringement. This is based on the fact that YouTube has a large number of video clips from Viacom's properties (MTV, Paramount Pictures, and numerous other media properties). Viacom claim that all these infringements are encouraged by the nature of YouTube, and that they are not doing enough to remove these.
Google, in a counter-offensive, has claimed that it is actually a hosting provider, and similar to numerous other hosting providers. It claims that Viacom's legal action, if taken forward will threaten the information exchange across the internet. The claims made from both sides are heated, and follow after failed negotiations.
Further, Google claims that it is protected by the terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which protects Internet service providers that act quickly to block pirated material once notified by the copyright holder. Viacom claims that because of the large number of clips, it takes a large effort to identify these pirated clips.
There was a fair amount of debate over this exact issue when Google had acquired YouTube. Did Google factor in the legal troubles that it would face when it decided to spend around $1.6 billion to buy YouTube ? In a bit of time, as this case progresses, we will get to know.

Turkey blocks YouTube over an offending video

The world of online content aggregators such as YouTube, Blogspot, eBay, etc remains in a constant spot of vigilance over court cases in different countries.

It started with eBay being ordered by German courts to remove Nazi stuff from being auctioned, with India threatening YouTube over a video posted on the popular video sharing site that lampooned Mahatma Gandhi, and now a Turkish court has ordered the country's ISP's to block YouTube till a video that mocks modern Turkey's founder is removed from the YouTube website.

When will these countries learn ? You cannot stop or censor such items so easily. YouTube may buckle down and remove the video, but since YouTube is based on user contribution, tomorrow another video may come up on the same issue, or may land up on another sharing site. Modern technology allows bypassing all such restrictions (although like China, you can be fairly successful if you throw a large number of resources and are able to arm-twist big companies to do your bidding).

YouTube and removal of copyrighted videos

YouTube is the leader in online postings of videos. Videos that get popular on YouTube have literally millions of people viewing these videos, and people featuring in these videos become minor celebrities.
YouTube also has a large number of videos that show clips from movies, TV Shows and other copyrighted material. Owners of these copyrights look askance at these clips (or whole sections) occurring on YouTube and want these to get removed from YouTube.
What is the debate over ? Currently YouTube is offering the option of removal of such copyrighted material only as part of a deal between YouTube and the copyright owner; and this concept if making people see red. These owners have an objection to being faced with such a condition for removal of copyrighted material.
Read the article on YouTube's offer of removal of these copyrighted material.
It may be that this is only the first salvo in terms of business negotiations, and that eventually most people will make deals with YouTube. After all, YouTube also offers the promise of being able to extend media viewership to the young people who go to YouTube and who seem to be moving away from regular TV viewing.
Of course, if the issue does not get resolved, it will go to court, and I would expect that the court would not allow YouTube to keep copyrighted material on its servers.