Assignment 4-1

Communication in modern culture is vastly advanced to when I grew up. The internet has allowed individuals to have access to virtually anything and everything. One of the more popular forms of communication and entertainment is video blogging. Individuals share music videos, film and television clips, or public recorded videos. You tube is a website in which users may upload and share videos. According to the Youtube website (2009), Youtube was established in 2005 and within only one year of inception was successful enough to be bought by Google Inc. Youtube is the leading website for video sharing worldwide.
I recently visited the Youtube website and was amazed at the types of videos that could be found. There were news, sports, music, entertainment, and even how to clips. It is easy to see how the variety and mass freedom of uploaded videos has led to concerns. Some of these concerns were stated at Wikepedia.com (2009) as copyright infringement, privacy and offensive content. The website notifies users of copyright laws and also states terms of service which forbid improper material, but the challenge is that Youtube does not view videos before they are posted. The website trusts that users will flag videos within the website that contain improper content. User privacy has escalated as a concern after a court ruling in 2008 which required Youtube to provide viewing habits of users. This led to the speculation that perhaps users could also be identified along with the viewing habits.
Despite the concerns, Youtube has been a hit in pop culture and continues to increase in popularity. According to Professor Wesch (2008), Youtube had 78.3 million videos uploaded as of March 17, 2008 and over 150,000 videos uploaded daily. It would seem that society enjoys being entertained and the opportunity to be seen. Whether it be to catch a commercial, a public apology by Chris Brown, or the latest news clip, society is tuning into Youtube to see it all.