The most popular video site on the web, YouTube has long been in negotiations with movie studios to stream full-length feature films. And while there are still a lot of details to be hammered out, sources say that the deal could be complete in thirty to ninety days, according to CNET reports today.
Report: YouTube To Offer Feature Films
Google didn’t exactly deny reports YouTube would be streaming full-length feature films sometime within the next three months. In fact, it was more of a well, we’re talking to lots of people right now.
YouTube Wants You To “Video Your Vote”
YouTube is encouraging voters today to take their video cameras with them and document the scene at their polling place. The video site has teamed up with PBS and is including these videos on a Google Maps mash-up.
Link Directly To Any Moment in a YouTube Video
YouTube announced today that it has implemented the ability to jump straight to any point in a video by simply adding a few extra characters at the end of the video’s URL. The YouTube Team explains on the official blog: To create a deep link, append the following to the end of a YouTube video URL: #t=1m15s. This says to link to the time 1:15 – you can replace the numbers before the ‘m’ and the ‘s’ with anything you like.
Guy Goes to Jail After Pointing Cops to His YouTube Video
What you post about yourself online can come back to haunt you. Who doesn’t know this? Well, a motorcyclist in the UK named Sandor Ferenci apparently didn’t until now. He posted videos of himself doing tricks and speeding at 130 miles-per-hour around Banbury, Oxfordshire before being arrested.
YouTube Calls For Help in Youth Violence Fight
In an effort to crack down on Youth Violence, YouTube is calling upon its community of users to help flag videos uploaded to the site that feature underage people doing violent things like fighting each other. Once a video is flagged, the YouTube team will review it and decide if removal is justified.
YouTube’s Search Ads – Will You Buy Them?
Google will announce its third quarter financial results on Thursday, and in the meantime, the company seems to be looking for revenue under every rock… and YouTube may be the biggest rock of all.Searches for all sorts of terms on YouTube are turning up links to one or more "promoted videos" on the right-hand side of results pages. Each ad consists of one small image and Google Adwords-style text ad.
YouTube Rejects McCain Campaign Request
Earlier this week, general counsel for the McCain campaign petitioned YouTube to give special treatment to political ads scrubbed from the site because of DMCA take down notices. General counsel for YouTube roundly rejected that request.
McCain Asks YouTube to Ignore DMCA Claims
After a slew of political ads from the McCain-Palin campaign were taken down from YouTube because of copyright holder DMCA complaints, the campaign sent a letter to YouTube (PDF) urging the company to be less immediate with its compliance with the letters and to subject videos to full legal review.
YouTube Finallly Looks to Full-Length TV Episodes
YouTube has finally gotten to the point where they are going to start offering full-length episodes of TV shows, presumably to compete directly with Hulu and its ilk.