Utubular

Youtube update: site is still offline, according to the entry page, but some of my imbedded videos are now working again. Not others though. Not sure why.

In other YouTube news, U.S. servicemen deaths classified "funny" is okay on the site, video montages of the evils of the Islamic faith, a Satanic cult helmed by Mohammed, the human form of Satan himself is strictly verbotten. (Why the inflammatory message in supersized font? This post explains everything) Small Dead Animals is also covering the story.

Dane Cook (who?) from Saturday Night Live (is that show still on?) had a monologue about YouTube last weekend. Naturally, the clips found their way onto YouTube. Days later, YouTube removes the clips from the site at the behest of NBC.

TechCrunch has received a rumour in its inbox that says Google is in negotiations (of some unknown level of progress) to buy YouTube for $1,600,000,000. Now thatsa spicy meataball!

Google's motivation might be that in less than a year YouTube has overtaken Google Video's massive popularity lead and far surpasses it (warning: details, cited proof, etc. don't exist at that link, just the empty claim)

A guy talking naughty to kids online has had edited versions of his pictures made into a montage. The comments to this item spark an idea I've bandied about blogging on for a while now: specifically, if its illegal for a 45-year-old accountant with an internet account to be talking naughty to 13-year-old girls, how on earth can it be legal for a 51-year-old police investigator to be online pretending to be the 13-year-old girl. Entrapment laws aside, in the end aren't you busting him for talking dirty to little kids? If he doesn't know that the "little kid" isn't a little kid, would it not be a fairly reasonable defense that he wasn't talking dirty to little kids, but rather talking dirty to other dirty old men who were impersonating little kids? In other words, that he was assuming that there are no 13-year-old girls asking for more pictures of his testicles, but rather even more perverse 51-year-old accountants [or hell, even perverse police investigators! -ed] with cross-dressing and roleplay fantasies. Typically these dirty old men pretend to be young people themselves not when the digital pictures get taken, I assume -ed], so I don't think it would be too unreasonable to use the "I knew the person I'm talking to is actually an adult who's pretending" defense. After all, the defendant would have been pretending already!
In reality if any of these child molesters who agree to meet the person they're chatting with, and then get busted in a police sting, the first thing they should blurt out when the SWAT team is tasering him (or, if not in Edmonton, the first thing he says when peacefully cuffed by an officer who isn't jacked up on cocaine) is "when do I get to meet the guy I chatted with? Is he hot?"

Anyways, back to YouTube related stuff: Brier Dudley at the Seattle Times wonders if spam artists have found a way to spam YouTube account emails.

Another take on the Malkin post above is this account that maybe YouTube actually does take action when videos are posted showing what happens to American soldiers when they come face to face with evil Muslims working under the command of Satan and Satan's prophet Mohammed. (And no, this is never getting old...)

ZoomInOnline covers the controversy of whether YouTube can stay interesting in the event it is forced to remove copywrited materials en masse (possibly creating an editing process). The debate rages over whether we really want to use YouTube to show home videos of Japanese guys playing in the park with their dogs, or clips from old TV shows that we are too cheap to buy on DVD *cough cough* $99 per season of Transformers *cough cough*. I think the answer to that one is obvious. If you doubt it, wait until Blogger Beta comes mainstream and I start using sticky posts.

If you don't follow the posting trail, Forrester Research says that YouTube will get sued, and that it will lose in court.

In a counter-argument, shouting loudly comments on RedHerring's "3 Reasons YouTube will survive". My first thought is that Napster "survived" too, just now everybody uses Limewire.