Youtube

Group Name

J.A.C

Group Members

Jackie, Corinne and Andrea

Group Topic

Our topic is Youtube and privacy issues

Initial Problem Statement

The problem with Youtube and similar video-sharing websites is the exploitation of individuals' privacy that can result from videos uploaded by third parties. With no legal bindings anyone can upload videos without consent of those featured in the video. We will explore the negative effects that arise from these unauthorized publications.

Background

Former employees of PayPal, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim took a simple idea and in the short span of two years made it into the fourth most visited site in the world. The concept provided individuals with an simple and easy way to share video files amongst eachother and brought users together forming an online community that provided entertainment, friendship as well as support. This simple idea contributed to an ever growing annual revenue worth millions for the company.

YouTube used incentive as a kick start to their company, with a marketing concept involving the promise of a free iPod nano to a random YouTube user. The giveaway based on a point system intrigued many to join the network; by uploading videos and recruiting others to join, users were able to obtain these points. The more points an individual user had, the more likely he or she were to win the iPod.

With thousands joining everyday uploading and viewing videos, YouTube quickly became an online phenomenon. With over sixty-five thousand uploads, and users viewing over one hundred millions videos per day, Google quickly saw an investment opportunity at hand. An interested Google made its largest purchase ever by buying 1.6 billions dollars worth of YouTube stock.

The YouTube tagline as well as company goal has become commonly known worldwide as “broadcast yourself”. Our issue is that many people are no longer broadcasting themselves; rather they are broadcasting others for their personal entertainment.

Youtube history

Youtube Statisitcs

YouTube:

-Hosts over six million videos at a 20% monthly growth rate

-Accounts for 60% of all videos viewed online

-Receives roughly 20 million unique visitors each month

-Takes up 45 terabytes of storage-about 5,000 home computers' worth

-Content requires several million dollars worth of bandwidth a month to transmit

-Total time spent watching YouTube videos since it started is equivalent to 9,305 years

-Most researched titles include "dance," "love," "music," and "girl."

Argument

The Youtube Privacy Policy centers on protecting viewers and uploaders of videos. People who wish to view videos can do so annonomously. Uploading videos, making comments, watching restricted videos and flagging videos requires a person to create a Youtube or Google account. The only information needed to create such an account is an email address and password. Any information disclosed by account users becomes open to public viewing, with no real protection of those who may be featured in the videos.

Thousands of new vidoes are uploaded daily (65000 as of June 2006) without any initial screening process. Youtube users themselves are left with the responsibility of contacting the uploader of any video that they feel violates their privacy and if no response is granted they are encouraged to ‘flag’ any video they think is inappropriate. Youtube provides guidelines on what type of material should be flagged; that which includes graphic sexual activity, nudity, suggestive, shocking or disgusting content, that promotes hatred or violence against a protected group or shows harmful dangerous acts. After a video has been flagged it is reviewed by YouTube employees and faces the possibility of being removed from the website. The YouTube website advertises, “Each flagged video is promptly reviewed by YouTube administrators (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) who immediately remove any content that violates the Terms of Use.” But with 65 employees (October 2006) the prompt review of thousands of videos and their removal seems highly unlikely. Even if videos are flagged and deleted there is always a high possibility that they have been copied and are already re-circulating the site. This leaves little hope for victims who want a video of them eliminated as the uploader holds all control of the video until Youtube administration is brought in.

Social Impacts of Youtube

Starwars Kid

Ghyslain Raza

When he was in highschool, Starwars fan Ghyslain Raza made what was suppose to be a private video of himself practicing lightsabre moves with a golf ball retriever. The video was a few minutes long and featured Ghyslain making his own lightsabre sound effects. A few kids at Ghyslain's school found the video and thought it would be funny to upload it to the peer to peer file sharing network KaZaA (April 19, 2002). The video was edited and a new version was produced that transformed Ghyslain's mock weapon into a believable lightsabre and partnered it with sound effects, Star Wars music and text. The video became vastly popular, not only at Ghyslain's highschool but all over the world. It is obvious the video was uploaded to make a mockery of Ghyslain. The teen, who alreday suffered from self esteem issues not only was embarressed by the video, but faced ongoing harrassement and bullying from class mates and other people who had seen his performance. This severe emotional stress forced Ghyslain to drop out of high school and finish his year at a faculty specializing in child psychiatry. His parents filed a law suit against the families of the four students who uploaded the original video, claiming their son was so humiliated the experience scarred him for life. A CA$351,000 settlement was reached in April 2006. As for the video, countless copies have been made and Ghyslain Raza is now the most downloaded male on the internet. Even though Ghyslain was monatarily compensated for his hardship, his life may never be the same.

Watch Original Star Wars Kid Video

Watch Edited Star Wars Kid Video

Indecency Made Public

Youtube exploitation has also gone even farther. In November of 2007, a mother of a two year old daughter and a four year old son was raped in front of her children while the attackers taped it on a cellphone and then later posted it on YouTube. The attackers, three boys age 14 to 16, were let into the house by coming with a neighbour the victim trusted. She felt the need to be social and opened a bottle of champagne. After having one glass she instantly felt unusual and soon realized they had slipped a date rape drug. She was then raped from night until morning as they all took turns one after the other. She was paralyzed and unable to move. The victim was unaware that this horrifying video was on Youtube until two months later. She never reported the rape beacause she "felt ashamed and humiliated and didn’t want to have to go through all this. What happened was so awful and I didn’t want anybody to know about it. I hoped it would all just go away but because it was on the internet it didn’t.” The video reached 600 viewers. The fact that such a horrid video was able to be posted on Youtube and was not brought to anyone's attention until two months and 600 viewers later is a great concern. This proves Youtube's screening processes and privacy policies are not effective. The poor 25 year old victim not only had to live with this trauma for the rest of her life but now has to endure the humiliation of knowing 600 strangers watched the worst day of her life unfold over and over again.

Solutions

As incidents such as the ones mentioned above become an increasing occurence it is evident that the flagging system in place by YouTube is inadequate to the protection of individuals' privacy.

Losing millions in lawsuit charges due to infringement and copyright issues, a now google owned YouTube, has implemented a new screening technology allowing them to put videos through a scanning process which will recognize infringing videos and remove them imediately. Although this advancement to YouTube's regulation of copyright infringement is a step in the right direction towards acheiving a solution it still leaves the issue of personal exploitation of individuals.

The obvious solution to this complex issue is to have YouTube administrators view every uploaded video and verify consent of all individuals featured. This is clearly an unrealistic goal, espesially for a site such as YouTube that receives over 65000 uploads daily. This would require YouTube to hire an unrealistic amount of staff in order to avoid the problem of videos taking months before being approved for public viewing.

Another solution would be to legally bind all individuals to the videos they wish to upload by requiring all account users to be identifiable. Unfortunately, this solution requires the personal information provided by the individuals to be honest and accurate. This would create one of two problems; one being individuals providing false identitification to conserve their anonimity and secondly people would cease to use the site in fear of legal implications.

As you can see there is no achievable solution specifically pertaining to our issue at this time as the YouTube site is all about people, created by people, the site depends on the integrity of those people to provide a safe and legal enviroment for all to enjoy.

Conclusion

Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim created an online community where people could speak their minds, share their ideas and show their talents to the world. They gave people a chance to broadcast themselves and share with eachother their experiences, it gave them a chance to have themselves known and to be recongnized somewhat like an online celebrity. Overlooked, however, was how easy and simple it was for people to broadcast someone else for the amusment of themselves. As demonstrated from the previous examples, this instant celebirty from video sharing websites can cause embarrasement, even emotional trauma to those unaware of it. Unauthorized publications puts people on a world wide stage, who do not wish to be there. It invades their privacy for the entertainment of others, causing some to suffer from anxiety, withdrawl and depression. Although video sharing websites may have programs in place to avoid this type of thing to occur, to completely remove already released files from the internet is almost impossible. With over 65000 uploads daily and 65 employees to screen them it may take months for them to be removed, by that time the damage has already been done. The damage done to indivduals victimized takes about 30 seconds to upload, 3 minutes to distribute, 10 minutes to be circulated and lifetime to be undone.