YouTube and Blogging
 

Today I successfully embedded a video in my blog using YouTube.

At first I couldn't get Wordpress to do it because the rich text editor kept messing up the embeddable code. But I found instructions here:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/53570:

To insert YouTube videos in your Wordpress blog do the following:

1. Login to WordPress admin
2. Go to Options >> Writing
3. Uncheck borht Users should use the visual rich editor by default & WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically
3 and a half: Go to User >> Profile and turn off rich text there
4. Go to Write >> Write Post
5. Paste the 'embeddable player' code for your YouTube video in the write box
6. Publish video

I'm pleased to say this handy set of instructions works. Now I find myself thinking I could easily fill up the blog with YouTube videos.

BUT

Is it ethical? I'm not sure where these vids come from. Should we care? Or is it just "fair use"?

Your thoughts?

Considering how DMCA is written, you can pretty much steal anything you want as long as you are reponsive and remove the offending material upon notice.

It sucks, but that seems to be the legal landscape right now.

Alex

I put the videos on my blogs, I dunno if it is legal though...

Why else would they give you the code to do so?

YouTube seems to be all about sharing stuff. I think the idea is to upload your own videos, but of course people will put up things that they may have taken from a members area and you can't really tell.

I think if I use YouTube I'll use videos that are obviously from the mainstream media or ones that look like amateur submissions.

The question would be what is youtube getting out of it. I have a feeling that there is going to be something ugly about spyware or some other deal with their code one of these days... just a feeling, no proof or anything.

Someone want to post a code example here?

Alex

Hey rawalex. Here is a code for youtube:

looks mostly safe to me, but, its loading a flash file so who knows what it can do.

My understanding is that youtube's business model is like this.

1) get a whole shitload of investor money
2) use it to become "THE" video sharing site on the net (non porn)
3) start adding ads once you get to a certain low point in funds
4) profit

they are also attempting to be a video distrubtion site for movie trailers, and commercials. For example I understand they were just paid a large amount to run the scary movie 4 trailer (which has been viewed some 100,000 times. its hard to beat exposure like that on the web. MPAA and music artists and such SHOULD be JUMPING on the chance to advertise here.

I think its a sound model :)

You can pretty much stuff anything you want through that code... a nice wide open way of doing things. Something will come of this one of these days. You can put all sorts of stuff in a flash file.

Alex

How much "adult" content have people seen on YouTube? I expect that they don't want any but I am sure some stuff slips through the cracks.

Personally, I surf it looking for old music videos, hoping people have posted them. I haven't used it with my blogs because the content doesn't quite fit. At least I haven't come across any that does.