Some of my favorite internet videos ever are now one of the best demonstrations of what’s wrong with having a single big corporation control internet video. YouTube has yanked the StSanders videos of bad guitar playing overdubbed on famous guitar players in concert. It’s impossible to explain with words what makes these videos so incredibly well done and hilarious. But it’s easy to explain what YouTube is doing: censorship. Any claim that this is a copyright violation is baloney: this is a textbook case of fair use and they know this.
Instead, Google / YouTube has pulled these videos down because it’s the safer corporate decision. Since YouTube is still the absolutely dominant online video host (four times more popular than the closest competition), this action largely removes these videos from public view. This is how free speech slowly slips away online. And this is why we’re trying to build a decentralized platform for online video.
