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YouTube Is Born
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be. “We’ve limited, really early on, the length of the videos. That’s ten
minutes in length to cut down on infringement,” Chad said in a 2007 in-
terview. The early restrictions placed on YouTube were eventually lifted,
however, as the website grew and adapted to the way people were using
it. Software was developed to identify copyright infringement long before
that video reached the public, protecting both YouTube and victims of
that infringement.
And meanwhile, the site just kept growing.
Text-Dependent Questions
1. Why did YouTube choose to automatically encode all
uploaded videos into a Flash format?
2. How did the creators of YouTube hope the website would be
used by its first visitors? How was that different from the way
users actually used the site?
3. What were some of the ways YouTube adapted to the ways the first visitors
were actually using the website?
4. In what ways has YouTube made the world feel more connected? List two
examples.
5. How does YouTube make most of its money?
6. What technological advancements happened around the time YouTube was
founded that helped the website grow in popularity?
7. What steps did YouTube take to prevent copyright infringement?