YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website where people can upload, view, and share videos.

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, BBC, VEVO, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for US$1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google.

Features
Viewing YouTube videos on a personal computer requires the Adobe Flash Player plug-in to be installed on the browser. The Adobe Flash Player plug-in is one of the most common pieces of software installed on personal computers and accounts for almost 75% of online video material. In January 2010, YouTube launched an experimental version of the site that uses the built-in multimedia capabilities of web browsers supporting the HTML5 standard. This allows videos to be viewed without requiring Adobe Flash Player or any other plug-in to be installed.

All YouTube users can upload videos up to 15 minutes in duration. Users who have a good track record of complying with the site's Community Guidelines may be offered the ability to upload videos of unlimited length, which requires verifying the account, normally through a mobile phone. When YouTube was launched in 2005, it was possible to upload long videos, but a ten-minute limit was introduced in March 2006 after YouTube found that the majority of videos exceeding this length were unauthorised uploads of television shows and films. The 10-minute limit was increased to 15 minutes in July 2010. File size is limited to 2 GB for uploads from YouTube web page, and to 20 GB if Java-based Advanced Uploader is used.

April's Fools
YouTube has featured an April Fools prank on the site on April 1 of every year since 2008:


 * 2008: All the links to the videos on the main page were redirected to Rick Astley's music video "Never Gonna Give You Up", a prank known as "Rickrolling".
 * 2009: When clicking on a video on the main page, the whole page turned upside down. YouTube claimed that this was a new layout.
 * 2010: YouTube temporarily released a "TEXTp" mode, which translated the colors in the videos to random upper case letters. YouTube claimed in a message that this was done in order to reduce bandwidth costs by $1 per second.
 * 2011: The site celebrated its "100th anniversary" with a "1911 button" and a range of sepia-toned silent, early 1900s-style films, including "Flugelhorn Feline", a parody of Keyboard Cat.
 * 2012: Clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about "The YouTube Collection", an option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD. The spoof promotional video promised "It's the complete YouTube experience completely offline.

Downfall Parodies
Most (if not all) Untergangers use YouTube to upload their parodies. Prior to the DMCA crisis, it was necessary to invoke Fair Use, however, after October 2010, this is no longer necessary (except for other non-Downfall parodies or videos, or Downfall parodies that make significant use of non-Downfall content).

Interestingly, Downfall parodies with the most hits are mostly a one-timer by YouTubers not common in the Unterganging circle, except a few by major Untergangers. Due to this, without a considerable network, a lesser Unterganger will find it hard to get views. Shomronon tried to address this issues by setting up Hitler Downfall Parodies website aimed to promote lesser known Untergangers and try to prevent the problem of "a meme controlled by one person."

Controversies
YouTube has had a lot of controversies since its inception and still has, such as spam, controversial or sensitive content (i.e. conspiracy theories, animal cruelty and racism) and issues with some of its users.

Fair Use Material
Although it's permitted to use copyrighted material on YouTube as long as it is used under Fair Use, YouTube has not always played by the rules (see Downfall parody controversies).

Although many companies agree Fair Use of their materials (such as Constantin Film as of October 2010), usually big Hollywood companies reject the Fair Use appeal, such as Universal Pictures (e.g. certain parodies have been blocked because they used scenes from Inglourious Basterds) and MGM (like HRP's Hitler vs Inspector Clouseau). In this case the only way to avoid the Copyright is to heavily edit the video in question.

As for music companies, they rarely allow the use of their songs unmodified.

Glitches
Among the minor glitches that would usually appear on any other site, in mid-February 2012 a series of strange glitches caused many Downfall parodies to be blocked. The glitch was later solved.

The new channel layout
Since March 2012 YouTube has implemented a new channel layout, that has caused more controversy than the other older layouts. Very few have liked the new layout.

The complains are usually the following: inability to customize the personal channel (unless you're a YouTube partner), channel comments are no longer on the front page, neither is the subscribers list, many have claimed to be lifeless as a result.

It should be noted that almost all the negative reactions are referred to the channel design, the YouTube homepage has not come under the same level of criticism (possibly because it changed more often).

Even newer channel layout
Beginning October 2012, another radical layout change sporadically crop out between page loads (sometimes you got this new layout, sometimes you don't), which has been criticized as being more flawed than ever. It removed so many features off YouTube (viewed as an attempt to 'dumb down' the website to suit it's dumb demographics) in what is viewed as another attempt to "Google+"-ify YouTube, that one cannot even view their channel and inbox without considerable tinkering and URL hacks. There is also no notice whatsoever on YouTube regarding this change.

Censorship
Some Untergangers have pointed out that typing "Hitler" in the search box will not produce any suggestions, while typing similar keywords (e.g. "Stalin") does not produce the same effect. This has been viewed by some as either Internet censorship, double-standards (as pointed out with Stalin) and infringement of the freedom of expression.

False Content ID Matches
A more recent problem involves the new content ID system. Although there are veritable Content ID claims, like the ones from Constantin Film, Universal, etc, many other ID matches are false, and are either spam or mistakes.

A list of several false content ID entities includes:

Disputing the claim on the basis of fair use usually works, with the claiming party withdrawing their claim. The most annoying and most of the claims come from RTI and geotv.
 * Farolatino
 * Believe
 * Content Lizenz Agentur
 * RTI
 * Nextmedia Interactive Limited
 * geotv
 * NewVision
 * Quiz Group Music
 * International E-sports Group
 * Ku6

The automated content match system has been so criticized that in mid-October 2012, YouTube introduced a new policy in handling disputes. In the new system, when a video is disputed, the claimant must either revoke all its claims, or issue an official DMCA takedown. As of November 2012, the move has reduced the false claimant problems drastically.