Youtube Named Times Person of the Year 2006

[miadon]

also a website is not a person so can not win "time's person of the year"

[Kalika]

ermmmm youtube is about the same as myspace to me, jsut a fad thatll prolly be forgotten about and replaced in a few years....

i do think youtube is nice for finding videos and what not...but i dont know if its so imcredibly omgz!!! awesome to start a topic about it 

[bilbous]

precedent

[miadon]

dam that rod!

[zanzibar]

Please, explain to me how youtube is not revolutionary my friend  

Tell me any website, that was around, before youtube, that did everything youtube does.

Please.. if such a website exists, that revolutionised us, explain to me where it can be found.

The way you speak, and the words you say, are as if youtube is a redo.... whom and what is it redoing that's done so well?

~~Datruth

Throughout the 1990's, it became easier and easier to host files and start up your own website.  That's why Youtube isn't revolutionary - all the things it does were around long before.

The thing about Youtube is that it's convenient and popular, but I'm not sure that's reason enough to call it revolutionary.



About myspace:  People don't use it to say anything important.  They just use it to hook up and look cool.

Livejournal and its clones are better.


But before all of these things, people had personal websites and there were BBS rings like Onenet, and before that was Usenet!

[neko kyouran]

Long live UseNet.   

[Sangwa]

I agree with Datruth when he says Youtube was revolutionary. I use it alot and you can watch all sorts of things. It's amazing for people like me who like to watch old stuff like an enterview of Cazuza, Genesis playing at their garage or something of the kind. I don't know where else to find those.
And I consider the fact that it is so easy to access and know about a contribute to its revolutionary aspect.


Of course wikipedia ranks better in my opinion, but Youtube's a big deal.

[bilbous]

Sadly, a large number of the files hosted on youtube have no business being there as they are blatant copyright infringements. If there were not sites like this available there would be less justification for the copyright cartel to wage war on the public interest in "intellectual property". The cartel would still try but it would be a harder sell. The worst part of the whole deal is the copyright/patent/trademark is a privilige granted by the state that carries liitle in the way of obligations on the grantee in return.

[zanzibar]

Of course wikipedia ranks better in my opinion, but Youtube's a big deal.

Wikipedia is even less important than Youtube.  It's more convenient, but everything on it could easily be communicated in a variety of other ways which have been around longer.

Sadly, a large number of the files hosted on youtube have no business being there as they are blatant copyright infringements. If there were not sites like this available there would be less justification for the copyright cartel to wage war on the public interest in "intellectual property". The cartel would still try but it would be a harder sell. The worst part of the whole deal is the copyright/patent/trademark is a privilige granted by the state that carries liitle in the way of obligations on the grantee in return.

Not true.  The more difficult it is to enforce copyrights, the less motivation there is for the RIAA to be jerkholes.  I want them to be fighting an impossible battle so that they eventually give up.

[bilbous]

How long before they pay the politicians to make copyright infringement punishable by prison time? Such is a possibility already in Australia ( see this ). The link does not specify incarceration but it does talk about infringement being a criminal offense so the potential is there.  You think there are a lot of potheads in prison now, wait until dl'ing mp3s gets the same treatment.
Big business does not give up easily they just fight dirtier.

[zanzibar]

How long before they pay the politicians to make copyright infringement punishable by prison time? Such is a possibility already in Australia ( see this ). The link does not specify incarceration but it does talk about infringement being a criminal offense so the potential is there.  You think there are a lot of potheads in prison now, wait until dl'ing mp3s gets the same treatment.
Big business does not give up easily they just fight dirtier.

I'm not sure if you disagree with me or not.

[bilbous]

Mostly not. The only way things will get better is if enough people tell the politicians enough is enough and they won't get elected if they keep it up. Unfortunately that is not likely as most people could care less about copyright until they get served with a supoena. At the very least the copyright cartel should be required to make available in a digital format anything they own that they choose not to offer commercially to the public. I greatly object to some mogul deciding what culture I am allowed to consume and burying everything else until it is lost.

[zanzibar]

It only happens that way in some cases.  For instance, there's a band I like called Splashdown.  They had an album under Universal which was absolutely amazing, but Universal decided not to release it.  Universal also refuses to sell the rights to the album back to the band.  Something similar happened to a band called Jawbreaker when they went to Geffen, until Geffen rereleased the album some years later (Technically, they sold the rights to Blackball records, a label started by Adam Phaller, the band's drummer).  But such cases are the minority.  The big issue is that major corporations have a monopoly over the means of distribution and promotion.

If people can use P2P software and music websites to access well known music, those mediums will flourish.  As a result, more indie stuff will get more attention since they exist along side the mainstream stuff shoulder to shoulder as opposed to being completely blocked out by Clear Channel etc.

[Datruth]

ThomPhoenix is correct. Time magazine only cited YouTube... along with other sites like Facebook, MySpace and Wikipedia. So it wasn't YouTube who won, it really was "You".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6187113.stm so says the BBC too.

I also think that YouTube wasn't anything revolutionary. No more than wikipedia, and I'd say less than wikipedia. Certainly it was evolution using the increasing speed available to users of the web and mainly a good business idea.

Wiki.. is more important than youtube....

Show me one person who would buy it for 1.6 billion.

Game, set, match.

No investor would feel that Wiki is better or more revolutionary than Youtube.

Youtube, was the inspiration for this cover, but after reading a few articles you guys were right that it isn't exclusively youtube but a few other sites, and it's more of an idea, than a site.

OH and someone here, i believe miadan, mentioned youtube is a website and can't be person of the year.

A few decades ago, The computer, was person of the year.

Again, game, set, match.

AS for copyright infringement, If you buy a cd and want to share it with people, on a global scale, I HAVE no problem with it.

~~Datruth

[bilbous]

Yeah well That is all very fine and good but let me know where I can get copies of this bands albums. I saw nothing on that site that would let me. I suppose I could listen to them if they didn't use crappy flash which is not well supported in linux.