Monday, October 16, 2006

The Dark Side to YouTube

YouTube is extremely addicting.
Here is another Silver Surfer episode: Return to Zenn-La.

Wonderful stuff. I can understand why Google wants to pay over a billion dollars for the company: it is easy to for users to add material, and its search interface is swifter and easier to use than those of rivals like RealPlayer. Indeed, they essentially have no rivals in this market.

However, there are two dark sides to the company: copyright infringement and political bias. Copyright is mostly a matter for Hollywood types to tackle, but the bias issue is discussed by Noel Sheppard over at The American Thinker. Sheppard points out that YouTube has a record of selectively removing and deleting conservative and anti-Islamofacist videos, and this problem is getting worse. One of Google's "senior advisors" and shareholders is Al Gore, and Google itself donates millions to lefty organizations like MoveOn.org.

As video blogging is the latest hot trend, we may be witnessing an institutionalized attempt to squelch conservative political commentary by controlling its distribution. Let's hope YouTube develops some competition, and fast!

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