Release notes: five new languages, email alerts, share to Buzz and Blogger

What better way to celebrate the weekend than with these recent adds and enhancements:

Language offering grows: There are five new languages in which YouTube can be experienced: Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian. Simply scroll to the bottom of any page, find where it says "Language" and click on your current language to access the full menu of options, including our five most recent additions:

Email alerts: We're experimenting with a new form of subscription alerts. Now, when you subscribe to a channel (or edit your subscription to an existing channel), you can elect to receive an email the instant the person you're subscribed to uploads a new video. This will appeal to people who check their email more frequently than they log in to YouTube (though we've never heard of such people *wink*) but who also want to know immediately when their favorite content creators upload new work.

Refreshed look for search results page: When you do a search, you'll see we tightened up the typography on the results page. We're using a consistent size and color to establish the basic look, and then we're adding a bit of color and bolding to bring more prominence to certain elements, such as view count. 

New sharing options: Click the "share" button underneath any video and you'll see two new platforms to effortlessly share videos to: Google Buzz and Blogger. Try it!

New upload interface: When you click on the Upload button, you may notice that things look a little different. As with our redesigned video page and as part of our larger "spring cleaning" effort, a main goal was to streamline the look and functionality of the upload page. We toned down some of the colors and moved the Webcam option to a more prominent position next to the upload button. We also made it easier to find information about how to upload directly from your mobile phone.

Player changes: As many of you have noticed, the video player is transforming, too. We've just fully released a new player design for all videos without ads. The goal is for the player to be as subtle as possible so that the video itself shines and doesn't have to compete with the stuff around it. We'll be following this roll-out with player upgrades for videos with ads and then for embedded videos.

Improvements to YouTube-on-iPad: There's a great native YouTube app on the iPad, but we've also made some changes to how the YouTube website functions on the device. Among the improvements: we created a grid layout for the home screen, search results and other video lists, and devised a new layout for the video page, with the video playing right in the page.

The YouTube Team

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Nylon produces “YouTube edition” of magazine

Nylon Magazine’s “Young Hollywood” edition, which hit newsstands on Tuesday, marks the first time a printed magazine has so tightly woven itself with YouTube for a special issue. The publication is using its YouTube channel as an extension of the content in the magazine, taking you behind the scenes of photo shoots and offering exclusive videos in which the young stars speak directly to the YouTube community.

Kick-Ass’s Chloe Moretz on her favorite video...



Twilight's Ashley Greene reveals what she’s watching...



Naturally, Nylon didn't just stop at Hollywood. They also gave some major props to some of the top beauty gurus on YouTube: MichellePhan, DulceCandy87, and KandeeJohnson are just some of the beauty experts you'll find in the pages of the magazine and in Nylon's videos:





Nylon will be uploading more videos while the magazine is on shelves. So go pick up the May issue and subscribe to NylonMagazineTV for the latest interviews.

Sadia Harper, HowTo & Style Manager, recently watched “Young Hollywood 2010 - Emma Stone.”

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Make an ad. Spread the word. Go to Cannes. You have 48 hours.

Last year, hundreds of young creatives took part in the inaugural YouTube-Cannes Young Lions 48 Hour Ad Contest, with two of them, Guy Dayan and Adeline Chew, winning a trip to Cannes to represent YouTube in the Young Lions Film Contest.



This week we’re launching the 2010 edition of the contest. The format’s pretty much the same: we’ll announce a brief from a well-known nonprofit at midnight on Friday, May 14 (GMT), and you’ll have just 48 hours to write, film, edit and upload your film to the Cannes Lions channel. You then have a week to get as many votes for your entry on the channel as possible, before a panel of senior creative directors will use the votes to inform their choice of two winners. Those two will get a fully-paid trip to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.







As this is the Cannes Young Lions, entrants need to be 18-28 years of age to take part, and -- of course -- very creative. If that sounds like you, head to the channel now and subscribe to keep informed. And remember to keep the weekend of May 15-16 free to create your ad. Good luck!



Tom Pursey, UK Product Marketing Manager, recently watched “Chemistry of Creme Eggs.”

More about → Make an ad. Spread the word. Go to Cannes. You have 48 hours.

Content ID and Fair Use

Over the past decade, the evolution of the Internet has altered the landscape for both traditional media companies and the doctrine of fair use, and the media industry has tried to keep up. The new ways that consumers create and distribute content are not a niche phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of people around the world now use the Web to connect and interact with content online, and a huge percentage of them go even further: they express themselves via parodies, celebrate their favorite videos with mashups, and use music in educational presentations. The people that upload these videos are typically the biggest fans, and are exactly the kinds of consumers rights holders should be embracing.

We listen closely to our partners and we're constantly improving our content identification and management tools ("Content ID") to make sure they have choices in dealing with these different uses of their content on YouTube. Over 1,000 content owners use Content ID, and we've built it in a way that lets them account for fair uses of their content: they can easily create policies depending on the proportion of a claimed video that contains their work, or the absolute length of the clip used. For example, a record label might decide to block videos that contain over one minute of a given song, but leave up videos that contain less than one minute.

Since Content ID can't identify context (like "educational use" or "parody"), we give partners the tools to use length and match proportion as a proxy. Of course, it's not a perfect system. That's why two videos -- one of a baby dancing to one minute of a pop song, and another using the exact same audio clip in a videotaped University lecture about copyright law -- might be treated identically by Content ID and taken down by the rights holder, even though one may be fair use and the other may not. Rights holders are the only ones in a position to know what is and is not an authorized use of their content, and we require them to enforce their policies in a manner that complies with the law.

Still, to make sure that users also have choices when dealing with the content they upload to YouTube, Content ID makes it easy for users to dispute inappropriate claims.

• When you receive a notice in your account via Content ID, we tell you who claimed the content, and direct you to a form that lets you dispute the claim if you so choose.
  
• If you believe your video is fair use, check the box that reads "This video uses copyrighted material in a manner that does not require approval of the copyright holder." If you're not sure if your video qualifies, you can learn more about fair use here.
  
• Once you've filed your dispute, your video immediately goes back up on YouTube.
• From this point, the claimant then makes a decision about whether to file a formal DMCA notification, and remove the content from the site according to the process set forth in the DMCA.

Content ID has helped create an entirely new economic model for rights holders. We are committed to supporting new forms of original creativity, protecting fair use, and providing a seamless user experience -- all while we help rights owners easily manage their content on YouTube.

Posted by Shenaz Zack, Product Manager

UPDATE: To clear up confusion, this is not a new feature. The dispute process has been in place since Content ID first launched in October 2007. We've changed some text to make that clear.

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