According to a recent report by comScore, U.S. Internet users watched 13.5 billion online videos during the month of October which is a 45 percent increase compared to the previous year. Hulu, another online video service which provides hit TV shows like NBA, Daily Show, 30 Rock and Family Guy moved up to the sixth position in rankings. Hulu is a joint venture by NBC and Fox Interactive Media. Read More »

McCain has requested YouTube to make available all the videos which were removed due to copyright complaints. He also stated that YouTube has been acting too quickly complying with copyright infringement notices.

On a letter to Chad Hurley, CEO, YouTube, Trevor Potter, General Council, McCain – Paula campaign stated, “Overreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech”.

The letter further states, “Despite the complete lack of merit in these copyright claims, YouTube has removed our videos immediately upon receipt of takedown notices. This is both unfortunate and unnecessary.”

McCain has also proposed for a full legal review of all the videos that has been taken down from accounts that were created for political campaigns or for candidates.

Google replied back to McCain’s campaign, mentioning that a substantial legal review of all DMCA take-down notices is not a viable solution. The reply further mentions, “Any such review would have to include a determination of whether a particular use is a ‘fair use’ under the law, which is a complex and fact-specific test that requires the subjective balancing of four factors. No number of lawyers could determine with a reasonable level of certainty whether all the videos for which we receive disputed take-down notices qualify as fair use.”

Looks like this argument would go on for many more days. And that’s exactly what McCain hates! This being a crucial time in political campaign, every minute counts!

Warnings by ISP’s do seem to work in Britain. A voluntary agreement between six of the largest ISP’s in Britain and the British Phonographic Industry has helped reduce illegal songs downloads considerably.

Internet piracy has always been a major issue for the music industry. Music industry suffers huge loses due to illegal downloads. A recent survey by a entertainment media research company may show some light in the tunnel.

The survey reveals that with just a warning from internet service providers can help stop many illegal downloads. The survey taken from 1,500 UK consumers found that 75% of music pirates would stop their illegal downloads if they are warned by their ISPs.

The survey showed that over 40% of the internet users had downloaded songs from illegal websites during the last year. Fifty eight percent of teenagers also mentioned that they freely downloaded music.

The anti-piracy deal by the British phonographic Industry and the six major broadband providers are working on various strategies to stop piracy. However, the agreement is still in its early stages and a decision to warn consumers would bring in a serious debate.

The research further revealed that 41% preferred YouTube for videos and 25% prefered MySpace for music.

The new SmartSpace from GoDaddy can help even an internet dummy to create a site at ease which has photo galleries, email addresses, chat rooms and a blog. That’s what SmartSpace claims in its caption, “Be live on the web immediately with an instantly connected domain!”

SmartSpace offers a free blog tool, a free photo site and free social space once you order a domain name with SmartSpace at Godaddy. Social space is an application by Smart Space which can be used to collect and display dynamic information from Flicker, YouTube, Google News and Facebook profiles.

The tool has a clean and simple interface as it caters to users who are not technically sound. The tool guides the user step by step based on the features requested. The only requirement needed from the user would be to choose the layouts, color preferences and customize it. That’s not a big requirement and hey it’s your website and you need to decide them.

The SmartSpace feature can be accessed by logging in using your regular username and password. With many new domain sellers and hosting providers arraying into the market, hosting providers have to provide additional features with little or no cost to hold on to their existing customers.

Following political criticism, YouTube has banned Videos related to weapons, guns and ammunitions for viewers from UK. The move is due to raising knife and gun crime among young UK residents.The Google owned YouTube is the most popular online video sharing website. Back in July, UK parliament members raised concerns over videos on weapons and intimidation. A committee was also formed to deal with protection of children against harmful internet content. The company requested sites hosting user-generated content to review all materials proactively as a standard practice before publishing on their websites.Home Secretary Jacqui Smith welcomed the move by YouTube and requested other internet sites to follow similar strategy. The rule on weapons and intimidation is the first policy change for a specific region by YouTube.Jacqui also added, “This is a real step forward. I would like to see other internet service providers follow suit to reinforce our message that violence will not be tolerated either on the internet or in the real world.”

Google has added a whole lot of features to the online PowerPoint application, Presentations. Some of its new features include embedding YouTube Videos, Google Gear and Speaker Notes.

Google has mentioned in its Google Docs Blog that seasoned presenters keep their slides simple and use slides to help illustrate their points, not to present all of their information. They jot down their talking points, examples, and supporting evidence in speaker notes. To help you do this in Docs, we’ve added speaker notes. You can print these speaker notes in advance, or pop them up in a separate window when you present. This would be a wonderful add-on to the impressive Google Presentations.

The new option to embed YouTube videos directly into presentations would be extremely useful on the internet while sharing presentations online using Google Docs users.