YouTomb is a project that I helped start, along with some friends at MIT Free Culture. It recently exploded on many of the major tech blogs (TechCrunch, Gizmodo, CNet, Wired.com, among others).
The project began after YouTube announced their automatic flagging system, for sniffing out potentially infringing content.
An automated scanning system cannot possibly differentiate between fair use and copyright violation with 100% accuracy (humans can’t either, but that’s a different story). As a result, it’s unavoidable that some totally legitimate, possibly interesting, videos are disappearing from the web entirely. YouTomb’s purpose is to shed light on some of the material that is taken down.
Currently, YouTomb has a compact range of features, but we’ll be steadily adding new ones to make it a more effective tool for highlighting copywrongs.
