A More Effective Way of Protesting YouTube

People are getting fed up with the Nazi-esque policies of YouTube. Yes, they are a private business and do have every right to remove content at their discretion. However, we also have the right to express disapproval of their policies and actions.

Copyright infringement is the #1 cause of YouTube pulling videos. The proceedure for investigating copyright infringement claims on YouTube is so flimsy, that it's non-existant! Even though I've ripped Alex Jones numerous times for his fearmongering, I respect his right to do so. YouTube pulled his channel for simply flashing a copy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, stating that the paper filed a copyright complaint. While I've read this paper and have been subjected to its tacky bright green boxes alongside the road in front of the houses of its subscribers, something tells me they wouldn't "file a claim" over something so mundane. Jason Bermas, apparently another host on Alex's radio show, called the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and asked them if they actually filed the complaint. The person on the phone denied that the paper filed any complaint over it with YouTube. Eventually, YouTube was forced to reinstate Alex's channel, and all the "Infowarriors" were happy again. I admit that if I were in a position to pull channels on YouTube, Alex's would be one of the first, simply to troll his fans. Still though, this was just an assinine reason to pull his channel, and only serves to further promote the site's censorship accusations against YouTube.

If I had to guess, I would say "Terms of Service Violation" is the second most common cause of YouTube pulling videos. I'm not going to bitch again about how they pulled my 9/11 video, but I've also seen them pull videos simply because of the use of racial slurs, excessive profanity, and other such trivial shit. Oddly enough, they have an Adult Content setting where the birthdate on your account must put you over 18 years old to view certain videos. What was wrong with using this for this kind of content? I understand not wanting to have hardcore porn all over the place, but deleting videos for cursing?

When there's any talk of protesting this, it's usually "Convince as many people as you can to delete their account and boycott YouTube so they lose money!" This is stupid and ineffective. Nobody will care enough to listen to you, and the few people that do listen won't even make a scratch.

Let's stop with this "civil disobedience" bullshit. Peaceful protesting has no effect if you don't have the large majority actively taking part in it. However, guerilla warfare has always been effective. The best part is, the method of guerilla warfare against YouTube that I am about to mention is 216% LEGAL and exploits their own system. You can either beg and plead people to delete their accounts, or you can run YouTube's bandwidth costs through the roof.

Let's look at some facts:

- Video uploads on YouTube can be up to 2 gigabytes in size

- You can upload 10 videos at a time (Not sure if the 2 gigs thing refers to total size of all videos or each video)

- Maximum video length is 10 minutes (although I've seen videos longer than 10 minutes)

- YouTube channels don't appear to have a limit as to how many videos you can host at one time (The Amazing Atheist once had over 600 videos on his channel)

- YouTube accepts AVI format videos (AVIs are generally large in file size)

 

So what we have here is a large potential to rape YouTube's bandwidth costs by uploading mass quantities of large videos. If it is indeed 2 gigs per video, then potentially you can upload 20 gigabytes of data to their server at a time. Should a band of 10 people do this at one time, that's 200 gigabytes being flushed down the toilet at a time, as well as money. Mobilize 100 people, and that's 2,000 gigabytes being wasted. I think you can see where I'm going with this. For the sake of a worst-case scenario, I will assume that it is only 2 gigabytes total for all 10 uploads. 10 people at a time uploading 2 gigs a piece is 20 gigs at a time.

Let's assume all 10 of these people have decent internet connections and an entire free day to goof off. It should only take half an hour max per person to upload 2 gigs to YouTube. We'll say each person can spend 8 hours a day fucking around at the computer. That's 16 half-hours. Each person could upload about 32 gigs to YouTube a day. 10 people times 32 gigs is 320 gigs a day. Of course, you can't expect YouTube to collapse overnight because of this. It would take time and dedication from a slew of people to essentially sink YouTube.

If faced with something like this, YouTube's only effective defense would be to implement a paid subscription feature, where you would have to pay to upload content. Of YouTube's millions of users, how many do you really think would pay to use the site? Pretty much the same people who are paying now. If anything, this would cause people to leave the site en masse and disuade people from joining up. YouTube's most likely in the red already as it is, and people leaving the site would torpedo them. Bankrupting YouTube would not only screw the site, it would screw its major "partners" who are pouring money into the site for advertising, like Time Warner, GE, Disney, and pretty much any major corporation you can think of. It's like killing one bird and injuring several others with one stone. I can seriously think of no better fitting retaliation for the gouging of countless people by these multi-billion dollar industries than to gouge them back by fucking them out of one of their revenue sources. They spend millions a year to advertise on sites like YouTube, and for them to lose the site would put a dent in them, especially in a recession. Since using an upload site for its intended purpose is legal, they'll have to spend even more money lobbying politicians globally to pass difficult-to-enforce laws to outlaw what we've done. Having to reallocate resources will be a bitch for these companies.

I have just shown you how maybe a thousand people could potentially bankrupt a powerful company and damage the income of others in the span of a year or so. Let's stop relying on others to take action and do something ourselves. Rape the fucking shit out of YouTube's bandwidth costs. Put Google (its owner) billions of dollars into debt and don't stop until YouTube changes its policies or collapses underneath the mounting costs.

Here are some tips to ensure you are effective:

- Upload files with non-suspicious names, like "me and some friends playing football" or something innocent-sounding. Files named "FUCK YOUTUBE" or "OPERATION SCREWTUBE" are going to draw attention instantly.

- Don't use other peoples' content in your video. No music from other people, no copyrighted images, nothing that will give YouTube reason to delete your accounts or file a lawsuit. Download a free-licensed beat or something from a website and use public domain images. Make a bunch of shitty MS Paint drawings if need be (keeping their content clean of course). Save them as BMPs too, since BMP files use a lot of data. Adhere to their ToS like Mother Teresa.

- Save your videos as AVIs if possible. AVIs are generally large in size and will allow maximum file size for minimum time length. If there's something that works better, let me know.

- File types that are usually large in size: WAV (sound), BMP (image), AVI (video). WAVs can be made in Windows' default sound recorder, while BMPs can be made in MS Paint. I'm not entirely certain if Windows Movie Maker can export as AVIs, but I'm certain there are free programs that can do this.

- Spread the word of this to forums you go to. Let's get as many people involved in this as we can. Don't beg them, just give them this article or tell them about the plan yourself. Post it in your MySpace or Facebook bulletins. Twitter it. Do whatever. Hell, plagiarize this article for all I give a shit. Just as long as people are seeing this, I DON'T CARE!

We can teach these Nazi fucks a lesson, and we can do it by using the tools they gave us.

 

© AngryJerk.net 2007-2010