Many readers will remember a while back when YouTube yanked some of my content for “its inappropriate nature”, but kept the video, when it wasn’t explicit in any way (and I got emails from gay sites affirming YT’s tendency to yank homoerotic content — the video was a naked man dancing). It made me not like them, even though I still blog videos from their site’s users. But now a change in their terms of service gives them the power to do what they want with your content. Not good. I just deleted all videos I cared about — I don’t want them making a buck off me or selling my content for advertising/whatever, fuck that. Yes you retain rights *after* the fact, but they don’t have to tell you before they use your content. I had subscribers too, which is a bummer. Check out what other blogs are saying, snip:

“YouTube has recently revised their Terms & Conditions which now allow them to sell whatever you upload there however they want:

‘…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… in any media formats and through any media channels.’

What this means is if you upload your web series to their servers they can now sell DVDs of it, merchandise it and probably even make a Hollywood version of it - and you don’t get a cent. These rights can also be transferred to anyone who buys YouTube, which is very possible since its incredible site traffic (100+ million videos a day) makes it an attractive acquistion target and the company currently isn’t making any money for its owners.”

Here’s the full post, and here’s the excellent post at Wired (also read the comments). Now I think I understand why YouTube couldn’t bother to have a presence at Vloggercon. If anyone has corrections or updates on this, please send them in. (Thanks, Xeni)