Happy Birthday to YouTube

As alerted to by Steve Johnson in yesterday's Chicago Tribune, accompanied by a great collection of related statistics (see below), the video sharing website YouTube today celebrates the fifth anniversary of its first video posting.

The level of mass popularity the site has reached--supposedly 1 billion views per day--is staggering. With over 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, I guess I use the site relatively sparingly, certainly in what I upload, and even in the amount of viewing I do.

Except for a rare sports highlight or excessively-referenced viral video that I feel compelled to watch, I use YouTube predominantly for one thing: music.

If there's a song I really want to hear and don't otherwise own, or especially if I want to share a tune on Facebook to commemorate a certain occasion, I can pretty much find it on YouTube.

And I find YouTube especially useful for seeing concert clips of some of my favorite performers--Bruce Springsteen, U2, Pearl Jam, Radiohead--often within hours of them performing a particular show.

But while I certainly have enjoyed YouTube, I also can't deny that there is something seemingly very wrong about it. Although I know there are many people who create their own content for YouTube, from family movies to extensive productions, and that YouTube (and its owner, Google) have reached agreements with many record companies and production studios that understand that YouTube is a great promotional vehicle, even if individuals are watching videos and hearing songs without any expenditure.

Yet despite YouTube's supposed efforts to adhere to copyright policy, there are millions of videos posted that clearly violate the rights of artists, broadcast networks and other creators. While I admit that I watch concert clips of performers who have never granted permission to be filmed or posted--and this is a clear violation of the artist's and their record company's rights--I do at least buy their official albums and DVDs.

This isn't to fully condone my actions, although in simply watching what others have posted of artists I financially support in other ways, I don't think I am doing anything illegal or too ethically corrupt. But there are even more egregious examples of unauthorized content anyone can easily find, that makes me often wonder how YouTube can rightfully exist.

For example, I pay to to hear Sirius Satellite Radio, with its content--including the popular yet controversial Howard Stern--available only to subscribers. But if you search for Howard Stern on YouTube, you can find over 2,000 clips--doesn't matter that they're audio-only on a "video" site--of content from his Sirius show posted in April 2010 alone. So it somewhat rankles me that others are easily able to hear for free what I have to pay for. And yet, as Stern mentioned one day on air, if he wants to have his privileged material pulled from YouTube, his lawyers have to file a detailed complaint about every single video that they feel are in violation. All told this seems to be more than 15,000 clips. So the illegal stuff stays up there, at least long enough to be heard by thousands of people.

I actually was intending this post to be a birthday salute to YouTube, which I really do like and can honestly say has enhanced my life to a somewhat significant degree. But I guess I couldn't help and point out that in being a site "operated" largely by its billions of users, YouTube often seems to traipse on legally suspect grounds.

So while you celebrate the 5th birthday of this internet phenomenon, next time you watch oodles of trademarked or otherwise privileged content, without compensating anyone, perhaps at least give it some thought. And yes, I am aware that the clip above of The Ramones playing Happy Birthday on The Simpsons in honor of Mr. Burns, clearly violates the rights of The Ramones, Fox Television, Matt Groening and The Simpsons' producers.

But I like it. And at least "Happy Birthday" is in the public domain, isn't it?

While I'm at it, here's my favorite YouTube clip. It's of Bruce Springsteen singing Thunder Road from a hotel balcony in Naples, Italy in 1997. (It's been on YouTube since 2006 without getting pulled, so it's seemingly OK with the Boss).