Sam Pepper has become a very controversial figure in the last few years. He is famous for his Youtube pranks and "social experiments" such as the one where he pinched random women's bottoms that led to sexual harassment claims. You may have heard of him recently due to massive backlash from his "prank" video where he convinced a friend that he killed his other friend "execution style". Now he seems to have disappeared off the face of the internet leaving only a single Tweet on an otherwise barren Twitter account.
Recently Youtubers the Fine Brothers announced a "React World" program where anyone could use resources they supplied to create their own versions of their famous "React" videos, provided they follow through with the legal requirements to license the use of that "style" of video from them. When the Fine Brothers announced that they planned to trademark the word "React" and framed it as an action "for the community", that community got pretty upset. They are well known for making their name from reaction videos from Kids, Teens, Elders and an assortment of other groups, which they also applied to trademark reacting to stuff in addition to just "react" in general.
Youtube is full of 'reaction' videos, as angry Youtubers were quick to point out, pretty much everyone has done it at least once. That's why it could be pretty annoying when one company decides to try to trademark such a general idea for their own use.
That's probably what began this steady decline in subscribers and a PR disaster.
Eventually, they decided to cancel their program and issue an apology on Medium to appease the people:
We realize we built a system that could easily be used for wrong. We are fixing that. The reality that trademarks like these could be used to theoretically give companies (including ours) the power to police and control online video is a valid concern, and though we can assert our intentions are pure, there’s no way to prove them.
We have decided to do the following:
1. Rescind all of our “React” trademarks and applications.*
2. Discontinue the React World program.
3. Release all past Content ID claims.**
Obviously the original video announcement has been taken down but if you didn't get to see it, this video parody will give you a pretty good idea of what it was like:
Did you know those re-made 10-year old viral video clips that jumpstarted YouTube's popularity?
Here's the behind-the-scenes look at how YouTube made this year's Rewind.
For anyone who loathes those horrible YouTube "social experiments," today is a glorious day.
Adrian Gee filmed a "social experiment" where he pretended to be a blind man to see if people would be dishonest when he asked for change. But the video was found to be a total lie when actors who said they were hired to be in the video came forward.
In a delightfully cringe-worthy video above, a journalist from TodayTonight called him out in a TV interview. Gee continued to lie and say the video was real, and then ended the interview abruptly.
But he did have something to say in a lengthy YouTube comment where he basically says that he lied, but it was all to troll TV networks.
I came up with the idea and thought it'd turn out to be an interesting video to shoot IF I could get a just a few people to take my $50. I contemplated on going to a bad area (which could be considered as 'The Hood' for anyone reading from the U.S) to shoot to get the reactions I needed but I took a second thought and thought to myself 'Why risk going out in 'The Hood' to lose some cash when I could just grab a few actors and get the shots that would be needed' So I decided to try it out and put a casting call out for actors to shoot a social experiment. I asked a few actors that applied and asked them if they were down and a majority of them were interested and enthused about the idea.
He continues...
After the video was up I have had a majority of the actors involved message me saying they loved the video it wasn't until I accepted invitations from the media for TV interviews that is when all of this went south. I had the top 3 TV networks in Australia basically fighting over me pressing for a TV interview. Initially I wasn't going to do any but then I reconsidered and thought to myself 'Why not?' as most of the stuff they put out to air are all lies what difference will this make. After all this is just a silly YouTube video that's intended to make you think. I basically 'trolled' everyone through the interviews via Channel 7 & Channel 9 (Channel 10 were smart and pretty much knew the video was staged and decided to back out from the interview).
SUUUUUREEEEE...Adrian Gee. How about this?
You were caught in a lie and your other dumb videos are probably fake, too.
YouTuber and cut-rate Jenna Marbles, Nicole Arbour, just posted a new video titled "Dear Black People." This will go well.
Arbour is mostly know for her last very offensive video, "Dear Fat People," which launched passionate responses from people all across the Internet who were outraged over her comments about overweight people.
In her latest video, Arbour continues to bring her juvenile humor and shock-for-the-sake-of-shock antics.
"What the KKK do and have done in the history of the world is completely f*cked up not OK. However, they are proof that the white people invented the hoodie."
She does actually hit on some important topics, like the school-to-prison pipeline and unfair incarceration based on minor drug offenses.
But that message gets lost. Because she is Nicole Arbour.
I start more debates than the people running for president. 😉
Researchers at University of Amsterdam and Qualcomm Research have created an emoji search engine that lets you use the tiny pictures to search through thousands of YouTube videos.
The prototype, called Emoji2Video, has a a curated list of 385 emoji users can select to search through a database of 45,000 YouTube videos
The researchers used deep-learning techniques to produce emoji labels for videos that seem to appropriately represent what's in them (a baseball or a dog, for instance) and to determine how likely it is that those things are in a given frame. About one out of every 50 frames was analyzed, Cappallo says, and the emojis chosen to represent those are averaged to get one short emoji list, ordered in decreasing confidence, for that particular video.
Researchers hope this technology could be used for bridging language gaps.
It still obviously needs some work. A quick search using the eggplant emoji gives you this video on how to make an eggplant sandwich.
Because we all know what the eggplant really means.
PewDiePie is looking to cash in even more on his YouTube video empire, and he's getting a little help from the creators of The Walking Dead.
He's getting a brand new show, and it sounds highly entertaining.
The new series will be featured on YouTube's subscription service, YouTube Red. The show is set to be called Scare PewDiePie, and will be a half-reality, half-prank show.
The Walking Dead creators and Maker Studios will team up to drop PewDiePie into real-life versions of some of the horrifying video game situations he encounters.
YouTube Red will be available Oct. 28 for $9.99 a month.
Other original shows
on the service includes projects by the Fine Brothers and College Humor.
When a proud mother uploaded a short video of her baby dancing to YouTube in 2007, she probably didn't expect it to become a lightning rod for copyright law.
Stephanie Lenz's children were just jamming out to Prince, a harmless representation of proud motherhood. Universal Music Group saw it as something different — using their music without paying for the rights.
The Prince song "Let's Go Crazy" was playing on a stereo in the background of the short clip. Universal Music Group sent YouTube a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), claiming that the family video infringed the copyright in Prince's song. EFF sued Universal on Lenz's behalf, arguing that Universal abused the DMCA by improperly targeting a lawful fair use.
Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that copyright holders like Universal must consider fair use before trying to remove content from the Internet. It also rejected Universal's claim that a victim of takedown abuse cannot vindicate her rights if she cannot show actual monetary loss.
Basically the Ninth Circuit court told copyright holders to slow their roll with all of the cease and desist notices that have plagued YouTube videos. The opinion states reminds these hyper lawyers that there is a legal doctrine called 'fair use' which allows the usage of copyrighted material without paying for the license for things like research, teaching, news reporting and sharing a video of your cute kids dancing to a song.
TL;DR A high court told copyright lawyers to calm down.
Twitch has dominated the new market of video game streaming and now YouTube wants a cut of the action.
As they announced at the beginning of the summer, YouTube has planned to launch YouTube Gaming, a separate site dedicated to streaming, watching and chatting about video games. On Aug. 26, they began a slow release of the new platform.
Getting started is a simple process of navigating your browser over to gaming.youtube.com and following the steps in a setup process (that includes phone verification). You'll need to set up encoding software, fill out the necessary info for your stream and tick off any optional features. There's a checklist right there on the setup page, but Google also put together a more involved guide to getting set up.
YouTube Gaming supports streaming from PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox One consoles, provided you've got a capture device sending video from the console to your computer. Google specifically calls out Elgato's HD60 as a YouTube Live Verified device, but there's a good chance that other game capture solutions work as well. If you've got one, try it out before you run out and buy something new.
Apparently, mobile apps for Android and iOS are also around the corner so you can watch your gaming of the go.
There's no telling yet whether the search giant will have any luck in a space already dominated by Twitch and executives at the leading streamer seem to think not.
For our current stats, we have 1.5 million broadcasters (11K Partnered channels), 100 million viewers per month who watch 106 minutes per person per day on average, and 38 million installs of our mobile app with 4.7 billion minutes watched across 10.3 million unique devices.
In case you missed any of it... here is the entire year crammed in 6.5 minutes!
In the 2014 edition of its annual video mashup of the year's top memes and memorable moments, YouTube brought together over 100 creators and enlisted the help of DJ Earworm for the soundtrack.
"Wired" has a good piece explaining the background on these Rewind videos and how this most recent one was created. There's also a behind the scenes video of the process, which kicked off back in July.
YouTube also released a list of the top trending videos of the year, with "Spider Dog" winning 2014, and the super viral catcalling video rounding out the top 10.
In case you haven't been following along, the internet has reacted voraciously to popular YouTuber Sam Pepper. In one of his crude videos Pepper pinches girl's butts as a joke, and it was subsequently taken down by YouTube. Claiming that his prank was in fact part of a 'social experiment' he then uploaded a second video of the joke repeated on men.
Other YouTubers and fans are speaking out about their experiences with Sam Pepper like Dottie Martin revealing how Sam approached her at a meet and greet last year and asked her to go to the movies with him. Nothing too weird about that, except for the fact she was only 16 and he was 23. She then discusses how she felt uncomfortable after he continued to try and touch her. After excusing herself from the situation, he sent her intimidating and manipulative messages. See her full video below:
Popular YouTuber Laci Green also gave her take on the Sam Pepper issue, but more importantly she talks about the culture on YouTube with all these obscene 'Prankster' videos and people trying to go viral:
Sam has been banned from all major YouTube events such VidCon and Playlist. He was also dropped by Collective Digital Studios.
