Brian Stowell

Website Application Components

YouTube Video Copyright and Usage Rules

1. How does YouTube.com work?

YouTube allows people from all over the world to upload their videos. YouTube has the second largest search engine on the internet which allows people to continuously upload and store their videos and search for other videos within the platform. The videos are easy to search for and can be shared through social media, email, and even embedded into websites. YouTube provides analytics information for videos that you upload and it uses algorithms to find other videos that you may be interested in viewing, based on the videos that you have already viewed or search for.

2. What is required by you to view videos on YouTube?

You will want to make sure that you have the most up to date browser and operating system, and a decent internet connection to view videos on YouTube. You don’t have to have a login or account to simply view videos, but it is a good idea to create one, as it is free to do so, and it allows you to save favorite videos, searches, and pages you choose to follow. Otherwise, viewing videos is pretty simple: find a video you want to watch, click on it, and enjoy.

3. What is required to post videos on YouTube?

It is also free and quite simple to upload videos to YouTube. There are really no limits as to how many videos you want to upload and you can do so from your mobile device or on your computer. Videos can be made public or private. In order to upload videos you do have to have a username and password, and you have to be signed in to your account. Other than that, the system and internet requirements are the same as what is needed to view videos on YouTube.

4. What is YouTube’s position on copyright protection, video ownership, privacy, and security of the videos that you have posted to YouTube?

YouTube does not view your videos before they are uploaded and they leave it up to the actual holders of the copyright to issue a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice according to the terms in the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). If the takedown notice is considered relevant, YouTube will then issue a copyright strike, in which they make the user watch a warning video and pass a quiz about copyright infringements. If a user has three copyright strikes issued by YouTube, their account in taken down and all of their videos are deleted.

As far as video ownership is concerned, YouTube basically owns whatever you upload to their platform, and you have to agree to these terms when you create your account and upload your videos. YouTube essentially gets a “royalty free, worldwide license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works, display, and perform the content” that is in connection with the video that you uploaded. YouTube will keep copies of everything you upload on their servers, even if you delete it from the YouTube site. Your video is now the property of YouTube forever. The best way to control the rights to your video content is to upload it to a website that you manage and control.

YouTube’s stance on privacy is generally the same their ownership policies. You can set your YouTube account to private, or even do so for specific videos individually, but YouTube will still own a copy of it, and they reserve the right to do what they wish with that copy, if only to keep it stored away on their servers. As far as your other data that is used within YouTube, they will keep track of your search and watch history to find other videos that you may like. They also use this information to better direct advertisements into the videos that you watch that may line up with your personal interests. YouTube does allow users to change their privacy settings to help control what information YouTube (Google) uses.

Lastly, YouTube’s security efforts have improved over the years, and they use outside partners through Google who provide automated services to detect security threats. Content that is uploaded to YouTube is now analyzed for detection of spam, malware, and illegal content. There are different security features that a user can access within YouTube such as Safe Browsing, Security Checkup, and 2 Step Verification. Your information is also encrypted when in transit within the YouTube (Google) communication pathways.

5. What video formats does YouTube allow when posting a video?

YouTube prefers .MPG-2 as their go-to video format, but .MPG4 would be the next best thing. Your video will also upload in the following formats: .MOV, .MPEG4, .AVI, .WMV, .FLV, .MEGPS, .3GPP, .ProRes, WebM, DNxHR, HEVC, and CineForm. When you upload a video to YouTube, your device or computer packages it into IP packets. These are fragments of the data from your video and the address that you are sending it to, which in this instance is YouTube. The packets are then encoded into radio signals that are sent through wifi or cellular networks. The video then travels through switches and routers within the internet until they get to YouTube’s servers. It is then that the video is reassembled to its original form and stored in the server.

6. What video formats does YouTube use when playing videos?

YouTube stores the video format that you upload and transcodes it to other formats using versions of multiple compression. All of the transcodes come from the original file/video that was uploaded and then they are stored after transcoding. The encodes are pre-rendered when the video is uploaded and then they pull the correct format from their storage as needed. In other words, if someone wants to view a video that you uploaded, but their PC or device uses a different video format to view the video, it will pull from the stored encodes in order to allow the person to view video. Different operating systems may use different video formats to view videos, so this process allows someone with a PC to view a video that was originally uploaded to YouTube by someone using a Mac or iPhone.

7. Find the code for a YouTube player. How does YouTube implement their video player?

The following code is an example of what you would use to implement a YouTube player that plays the one video that you have linked within the code.

<iframe id="ytplayer" type="text/html" width="640" height="360"

src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M7lc1UVf-VE?autoplay=1&origin=http://example.com"

frameborder="0"></iframe>

However, it may be best to also use the code for the IFrame Player API to insert a video player in the web page so that more than one video can be played in that location. You can use the player to upload a playlist of videos or the entire video collection from one specific YouTube profile.

 <div id="ytplayer"></div>

<script>

// Load the IFrame Player API code asynchronously.

var tag = document.createElement('script');

tag.src = "https://www.youtube.com/player_api";

var firstScriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];

firstScriptTag.parentNode.insertBefore(tag, firstScriptTag);

// Replace the 'ytplayer' element with an <iframe> and

// YouTube player after the API code downloads.

var player;

function onYouTubePlayerAPIReady() {

player = new YT.Player('ytplayer', {

height: '360',

width: '640',

videoId: 'M7lc1UVf-VE'

});

}

</script>

8. Can you display a video using YouTube’s player from outside YouTube?

Yes, see the above answer to question #7, as a YouTube player can be embedded into you personal website without logging into or pulling up the YouTube site. The code above will allow the video to be pulled from YouTube without being on their site.