Our Terms of Use Clarified

You may have seen some of the blogs out there talking about our 'new' Terms of Use that would supposedly allow us to sell any videos our users uploaded to the site. Before going further, allow me to clarify: YouTube has never had the rights to sell, nor do we have any intention to sell, our users’ content. Plain and Simple.



These blogs posted a section from our Terms of Use completely out of context omitting a few key sentences (always be mindful of those darn ellipses). The section in question is quoted below and the sentences in bold were the ones omitted. If you don't want to read all that boring legalize, here are the CliffsNotes:

You keep ALL the rights to your videos.

We have the right to syndicate the content of our website. We have to have this to allow for our embed and API functionality.

As soon as you remove your video from YouTube, we lose all rights to redistribute or syndicate that video in any way. So once your video is gone from the site, we cannot do a thing with that content.

Terms of Use Section 5 (B):



For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.



Hopefully this clarifies matters and puts any unrest at ease about who owns the rights to your videos on YouTube. YOU own the rights to your videos.



Best,

Maryrose

The YouTube Team

Comments Restored

Just a quick update for all of you that were affected by the comments bug on our site the last few days. In addition to fixing the bug we have now restored all comments that were mass removed. Again, our most sincere apologies for the inconvenience and aggravation this caused many of you. If you any questions, issues or just want to rant (we deserve it), please don't hesitate to contact us.



sheepishly yours,

Maryrose

The YouTube Team

Comments Bug

It recently came to our attention that there was a bug in our comment
code that allowed users to delete comments from videos which were not
their own. Unfortunately, by the time we became aware of the issue
several users exploited the bug to maliciously delete thousands of
comments from other users videos. We have since fixed the bug and are
actively working to restore all the comments that were removed.



To all of our users who had their comments deleted, please accept our
most humble apologies. There is absolutely no excuse for what
happened, it was a bug in our code - and one we should have caught.
We can only say that we are feverishly working to restore your
comments and we'll do everything we possibly can to make sure
something like this does not happen again.



To all of our users who have been abusing comments with flagrant
spamming, hate speech and other malicious activities - this behavior
will simply not be tolerated on our site. If you engage in such
activity be forewarned your account will be deleted and you will be
permanently banned without warning.



YouTube is a place for everyone to express themselves. It is meant to
be a creative, entertaining and democratic environment. Let's not
allow a few bad apples spoil the bunch.



Maryrose

The YouTube Team

Not Hacked, Just Pushing

Last night we pushed out a bunch of new features, and apparently tricked the online world into thinking we were hacked with our down page message. Sorry if we scared you, we often forget how closely everyone is watching our little 32 person company. So bad spelling and jokes aside, here are the new features we pushed out last night.

Channels:

We think our users provide some of the most entertaining content in the world, and we're working to continuously develop new and exciting ways for you to broadcast yourself. What better way to do that than to give every user the ability to become their own channel? Now all content creators and collectors, be it professional filmmakers, videobloggers or just people who love chihuahuas can broadcast videos from their channel for all the world to see. You can visit our Channels tab to check out YouTube's most subscribed channels, or simply go to your profile to start creating and customizing your own channel. Here are just some of the new features included in channels:

Color customization: make your channel look as cool or as ugly as you like.

Video Log: showcase and discuss videos (yours or others) on your Channel

Channels I'm watching: check out what channels other users are subscribed and find great new content

Blog It:

You can now post videos directly to Blogger, BlogSpot and LiveJournal (and we'll be adding support for more blogs soon). Once you set up your blog options, just click the 'blog it' button when watching any video - and voila! your blog entry is created.



Viewing History

Many of our users have been asking for this feature, so we've created a viewing history log of the last 100 videos you've watched. We absolutely respect your privacy and do not store any of this information on our servers. You can also clear your viewing history at any time by clicking the 'clear viewing history' at the bottom of the page.



That's all for now, but check back often - we've got a bunch more features coming out very soon! And remember to send me an email with your thoughts, feedback and any other new features you'd like to see.



With Love,

Maryrose

The YouTube Team

Video Responses

We recently noticed that within many of the different ecosystems on YouTube our users are doing something really cool - they're communicating with each other through their videos. Text comments and messages are great, but our users have once again created something really innovative completely on their own - video responses. It's been amazing to watch our users create an entirely new mechanism for communicating with one another. However, one of the challenges with these video dialogues has been there is no way to 'link' your response back to the original video. To encourage and simplify this type of communication we just launched a new Video Response feature that will allow you to upload your own video reply while you're watching a video. Just look for the 'post a video response' link on any video watch page. All video responses will show up directly beneath the original video (just like text comments).



Check it out and let us know what you think!



Maryrose

The YouTube Team

YouTube Goes Wireless

The below video of me and Powers (your humble product servants and amateur acrobats extraordinaire) was uploaded directly to YouTube from Dwipal's cell phone. That's right, with YouTube's new mobile uploads feature you can now broadcast yourself to the world without ever using your computer. Check it out!

Stephen Colbert Goes to Washington

By now many of you have seen that the videos posted earlier this week of Stephen Colbert roasting President Bush at the annual White House Correspondents' dinner have been taken down. We know these videos were extremely popular and of immense social and political importance to many of you. The videos were not removed due to the content or any political bias. They were removed at the request of CSPAN, who claims to be the copyright owner. A number of you have inquired about whether or not the speech was considered 'public domain' and therefore exempt from copyright protection. Unfortunately, CSPAN has asserted that the video footage uploaded was broadcasted and owned by them.



When we become aware that there are videos on the site that were uploaded without the copyright owners permission we remove them and in most cases, (as was the case with the CSPAN videos) we become aware because the copyright owner contacts us and requests that the video be taken down. Copyright laws can be a tricky and a somewhat complicated matter but we want our community to be one where everyone's creative rights are respected.


Best,

Maryrose

The YouTube Team