14 DAY TRIAL // At this time, YouTube is the most known online video sharing service that allows you to publish, share and comment videos with friends, family or other members of the community. YouTube was acquired by Google in October 2006 for $1.6 billion and the company is continuously trying to improve the service to pay off the investment and attract even more users. The most important update added to YouTube concerns TestTube, a testing platform inspired by Google's Labs that is meant to allow the company and users to test the new features before they are included into the final version of the service.
Since the Google acquisition, the YouTube service was continuously criticized and attacked by multiple users or companies, being sued for copyright infringement or for publishing videos without authorization. One of the most well known lawsuits filed against the company concerns Daniela Cicarelli, Ronaldo's ex-wife who sued YouTube for publishing videos without her approval. A Brazilian court closed the service in their country until the search giant removes all the movies displaying the Brazilian model.
Last week, Viacom, the owner of numerous televisions including MTV and Comedy Central, demanded YouTube to remove almost 100.000 clips because the company receives praises for the content provided by other publishers without making any payments. It seems like the search giant already started to remove the clips because some of the titles are now unavailable.
Today, Google Blogoscoped posted an article about The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that helps you keep your YouTube video available if it doesn't infringe any copyright or it doesn't belong to Viacom. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a video asking you to contact them at this mail if you received a notification in February 2007 telling you that YouTube had removed your content at the request of Viacom, and you believe that this removal was unfair (either because your video was fair use - usage for parody, comment, criticism or news reporting - or because it was non-Viacom content). The EFF protects netizen's rights since 1990 and accepts your donations."