Analysis of the YouTube Survey

Today as the internet technology has been developed rapidly, a number of problems have happened. Infringement of privacy or copyright and overflows of improper words or scenes are the typical examples. While I was discussing social issues in News Talk class of CESL(Center of English as a Second Language), which belongs to SIUC, I found out that YouTube has been involved in some problems such as $ 1 billion lawsuit of copyright infringement. CESL students of News Talk class and I conducted a survey of how SIUC students think about the problems of YouTube. The questionnaire was made by gathering some questions from each discussion group. I carried out the survey at the Student Center and participants were happily answered the survey questions. The topic of my group is the copyright, and I’ll explain our survey result related to the copyright.

The survey told us how SIUC students think about YouTube and the problems related to the internet. To the question that whether YouTube is guilty or not, 42 percent of the participants said that YouTube is not guilty and only 25% of respondents answered YouTube is guilty. 74 percent told that YouTube would not lose the lawsuit or they didn’t know who would win. Many young students don’t think YouTube will lose. Also, 63 percent of respondents agreed with that YouTube has just been providing a place to post video clips and the infringement of copyright is not YouTube’s fault. Especially, younger people under 23 are more likely to defend YouTube than older people over 22. 58 percent of participants have ever watched unauthorized clips, and 69 percent said that they shouldn’t pay for the YouTube clips.

I think YouTube is innocent. It is not YouTube that showed unauthorized clips. Additionally, just providing a place to post video clips is not illegal. YouTube doesn’t know how the spaces will be used. YouTube can’t supervise every video clip all the time. Also, many survey participants have similar idea. One thing I found through the survey is younger people are likely to defend YouTube. Maybe this is because younger people use more time than older people do. And they are more accustomed to the internet culture. In our survey, there were some mistakes. Some questions were similar, and some words were ambiguous. If we correct these faults, our survey will be better.

written by Allen