Okey dokey, here’s what the fuck’s up, internet. All ya’ll YouTube frequentin’, inane iMovie video montage makin’, Twilight obsessin’, Kristen Bell mentally undressin’ motherfunkers better get ready for the big pain, ‘cuz not only does every single person with a functioning parietal lobe think your fan videos are stupid, so does YouTube itself.
Actually, that was out of line. YouTube doesn’t hate your movies that much. I even assume Steve Chen and Chad Hurley stipulated in their initial business plan that moronic fan tributes to Final Fantasy would likely account for half their server space. The real villain here, as always, are the big, fat, Goo Goo Dolls-hating record companies. For awhile, YouTube’s policy ran parallel with the record companies’ party line -- if the corporations discovered a video illegally utilizing one of their rightfully-owned songs, YouTube would automatically remove the video and pretend like there had never been an honest and heartfelt tribute to Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina set to “Iris” (I’ll never forgive you for that, YouTube).
But now YouTube has changed its tune. Instead of removing the video altogether, the site will first warn you about your dastardly copyright infringement, then suggest you either remove the music from your video and keep it online or change the audio entirely with a song from YouTube’s “library of pre-cleared music.” Oh, the glorious options! This policy most likely acts as a harbinger for a broad (and profitable) elimination of all possible infringing content.
Whatever -- as long as it gets rid of at least a few of these Naruto + Nickelback tributes, I’ll be glad.