I case you had forgotten, Viacom is still suing YouTube. Opening statements were presented today and the arguments are shaping up much as we expected. Viacom says YouTube doesn’t do enough to keep copyrighted materials off YouTube, and YouTube says that the “safe harbors” provision of the DMCA protects them from the claims. However, some interesting bits of behind the scene dealings have also come out.

According to a blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine, for years Viacom hired people to upload their content, and even went so far as to “rough up” the video so it looked stolen. In an attempt to be stealthy they sent employees to the local Kinkos to upload some content so it wouldn’t be traced to Viacom. All this sneaking around worked super well, even on Vacom itself. YouTube points out that Viacom occasionally asked for a clip to be removed only to reverse themselves upon realizing they uploaded it. According to YouTube, several of the clips involved in the suit were uploaded by Viacom.

The post closes with assurances that YouTube would fight the charges and continue to be a “leader in providing media companies with 21st century tools to control, distribute, and make money from their content online”. Do you think YouTube is at fault, or is Viacom just spoiling for a fight?

How odd is this? Google, which makes a bit of coin by making anything and everything available through its search engine to anyone and everyone, would prefer a little privacy when that information is about itself. Google has asked a federal court to keep sealed documents filed in the case between it (as owner of YouTube) and Viacom for another month.

Google’s request comes on the heels of Viacom’s asking for the records to be unsealed right away. Unsealed means the records will be publicly accessible--the ‘down and dirty’ of the Google/YouTube-Viacom battle can at last be revealed. According to Viacom, and entertainment lawyer Ben Sheffner, law requires that records, save for trade secrets, be unsealed once summary judgment has been filed for. Google, on the other hand, envisions a nightmare of inefficiency in processing the records, which might impede Google’s final arguments in the case.

What’s in the records is anyone’s guess. Some are hopeful there’ll be more embarrassing admissions, such as Google emails that indicate YouTube managers were uploading or condoning the presence of copyrighted material on YouTube. Or Viacom’s, where employees purposely uploaded Viacom content to YouTube to promote Viacom’s product.

If such things do exist in these records it will take a while to find out. During the three year battle hundreds of thousands of pages of information have been exchanged. It’ll take a while to shift through it all once its released--whether that’s now, as Viacom as requested, or in June, when Google prefers.

Image Credit: Carolyn Coles/Flickr

The Internet is such an easy place to play that it’s easy to forget that some are forced to struggle in it. People with hearing impairments are one obvious example--there’s a lot of sound in the online environment, and not experiencing that sound makes the Internet a less enjoyable place to be. YouTube’s been working to overcome that problem by allowing captioning of videos. It is now going one step further and implementing auto-captioning on all video uploads.

Auto-captioning, which will at present be restricted to English language videos, uses speech recognition to create an automatic transcription using the voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice. Videos, once uploaded, will be available to a wider audience of people than before. And YouTube is aiming beyond just those with hearing impairments. It sees this feature as useful for making English language content available to non-English speakers.

It looks like YouTube will apply auto-captioning retroactively--to all the English language videos in its collection. (Video owners can speed up this process by running their videos through the auto-captioning process.) And, YouTube’s goal is to expand the reach of auto-captioning to include other languages. Still, the technology is in its infancy, and YouTube suggests some patience with the transcriptions--they aren’t foolproof just yet.

Image Credit: YouTube

Adobe has released the third beta version of Flash 10.1, and it comes with a nice treat for the early adopter on the move. Beta 3 finally adds GPU acceleration support for the Intel GMA 500 chipset. This is the graphics hardware found in the majority of netbooks. What does this mean in practical terms? Well, just 720p Flash video on a netbook, that’s all.

Over at Engadget they were able to coax a Dell Mini 10 to play back 1080p content as well. Both Youtube and CBS streaming appeared to work well enough with minor lag. Still, when any previous attempts to play this content brought a netbook to a grinding stop, you can’t be too picky.

The results are good for a beta. Sure, there’s still some jitter but it’s a vast improvement. Adobe has been racing to complete the update of the much maligned plug-in. The new beta gives us hope that the wait may be worth it. Get the beta 3 version of Flash right here and enjoy.

Rick Astley may never give you up, but that didn't stop YouTube from giving up on the 80s pop star. We're not sure exactly when it happened, but the video sharing site has pulled the plug on the original 'Rickroll' video, the one that recorded over 30 million views, nearly all of which were unintended.

So why did YouTube take the video down?

"This video has been removed due to terms of use violation," a message reads when trying to load the video.

That's all YouTube and Google are so far willing to say on the matter. Nevertheless, don't let the take down give you a false sense of security. There are still plenty other videos of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" floating about on YouTube, as well as the rest of the Internet.

If you are a Google Voice user and you’ve tried to explain the service to someone else, it probably didn’t go well. The other party likely came away as flummoxed as ever, and you made a fool of yourself with all that wild gesticulating. Well, that’s what happened to us anyway. Don’t worry though; from now on you can simply direct friends and family to Google’s new series of Youtube videos detailing the “awesomeness” of Google Voice.

The first video is a simple overview called “What is Google Voice?”  It does an admirable job of getting to the meat of the service. It doesn’t go into detail about how to use any of the features, but it lets the uninitiated know what they’re going to get when they sign up. It goes over ringing multiple phones, call screening, blocking callers, greetings, and voicemail transcription.

The Google Voice channel also has additional videos about each feature. There are 11 videos in all right now. So even if you’re a veteran Voice user, there might be something to learn from watching them. You can find all the videos right here. Do you have a Google Voice account? How do you use it?

You never know what will be returned in a YouTube search. And maybe you don’t what to know. To help you control better the content you’re exposed to on YouTube, Google is introducing a Safety Mode that will help you screen out potentially objectionable content.

Safety Mode is an opt-in feature. The option is provided at the bottom of a YouTube page, and opting in is temporary, unless you’re signed into your account. Searches that stray outside of Safety Mode return nothing, but a notice will be provided that explains Safety Mode blocked the searched for content. Likewise, if results are filtered a Safety Mode warning will be provided. When Safety Mode is on comments will, by default, be hidden. They can be displayed, but objectionable words will be replaced with asterisks.

Shortcomings to Safety Mode are obvious. No filtering system is foolproof--some ‘bad’ stuff is bound to sneak through. Google readily recognizes this, and provides a suitable warning. And, because the keywords are set at the system-level, there’s a bit of Big Brother at play here. However, this latter concern is mitigated, to a degree, by Safety Mode being opt-in. If you don’t want it, don’t use it. (Still, it would be nice to individually determine what is, and what is not, objectionable.)

Safety Mode is being rolled out over the next day or so. When it’s available you’ll find it at the bottom of any YouTube page.

Image Credit: Google

If all the talk of HTML 5 has piqued your curiosity, then you may want to give YouTube's new HTML 5 experiment a try. The world's most popular video streaming portal is now offering a HTML5-based alternative to the Adobe Flash player. But the YouTube HTML 5 video player is only compatible with three browsers: Chrome, Safari, and  Internet Explorer with  ChromeFrame. While other browsers may support HTML 5, only the two mentioned above support the H.264 video codec at this moment.

Mozilla and Opera have chosen to support the open Ogg Theora codec instead of the H.264 codec. But before you blithely take the plunge, it is worth reminding yourself that the HTML 5 video player is in an experimental phase and has its limitations. It doesn't support fullscreen viewing and videos with captions, annotations, or ads. Also, the HTML 5 player may not work alongside other Testtube experiments. HTML 5 support in YouTube can be enabled here.

Despite how the press portrays Hollywood as all glitz and glamour, there are a lot of hard working have-nots toiling away in the film industry. These have-nots don’t get the notoriety of their more famous brethren, which makes them, all-in-all, a desperate bunch. This makes YouTube’s recent venture up to the Sundance Film Festival a pretty smart move. If you want to get into the film rental business, and the big names aren’t biting, then start trolling for the have-nots. And where better to find them than at Sundance?

Let’s take YouTube’s action as both cynical and strategic, and put it aside. Because, if the have-nots bite, then one of the ultimate beneficiaries of this plan will be us. Each year independent filmmakers show off their wares at Sundance, and a small handful wind up being well worth watching. Problem is, the major studios aren’t so keen on cutting distribution deals, which prevents us from seeing them. YouTube is offering a new approach that eliminates the middleman, gives filmmakers a way of promoting their product (while making a few bucks), and gives us a chance to see some good cinema.

YouTube says it will make available five films from the 2009 and 2010 festivals for rental starting this Friday and running through Sunday, January 31. YouTube says it has also signed up other U.S. partners from which it will offer a small collection of rental videos in the weeks ahead. And lastly, YouTube will promote its rental program among independents at Sundance with a “Filmmakers Wanted” campaign.

YouTube’s advice: get your checkout account ready, pop some corn, and stock up on swedish fish--it’s showtime!

Image Credit: YouTube

Unfortunately for OK Go, there's little to no chance that any of their music videos are going to go viral again and get 50 million hits, because as lead singer Damian Kulash puts it, "you can't embed diddlycrap." In an open letter to fans, Kulash offers up a lengthy explanation as to why the decision was made, why it sucks, and why it's a good thing (for some). Oh, and there's an apology thrown in there as well.

"We've been flooded with complaints recently because our YouTube videos can't be embedded in websites, and in certain countries can't be seen at all," Kulash starts off. "And we want you to know: we hear you, and we're sorry. We wish there was something we could do. Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it's now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago."

Kulash goes on to describe record labels as a sort of necessary evil which front all the money to distribute and promote albums, press CDs, make videos, and everything else that "adds up to a great deal more than we have in our bank account." So it's the labels' right to cash in everywhere they can. After all, "they need new shoes, just like everybody else."

That doesn't mean OK Go agrees with EMI's decision, and on the contrary, Kulash says, "It's a decision that bums us out. We've argued with them a lot about it," to no avail, obviously. So "in the meantime, the only thing OK Go can do is to upload our videos to sites that allow for embedding, like MySpace and Vimeo. We do that already, but it stings a little. Not only does it cannibalize our own numbers (it tends do do our business more good to get 40 million hits on one site than 1 million hits on 40 sites), but, as you can imagine, we feel a lot of allegiance to the fine people at YouTube."

Read the entire open letter here.

Image Credit: Gizmodo