Is YouTube Going Down the Tubes?

I don't know about everyone else, but I love YouTube! I love that you can find just about anything you want on YouTube. I know YouTube is just one tiny element on the gargantuan information highway known as the World Wide Web, but I can't remember the last time I typed something into the search engine at YouTube and didn't come back with at least ten (usually more) videos matching my parameters. So it was with some dismay but not surprise that I read recently about the move by Viacom to have YouTube pull in excess of 100,000 videos for copyright infringement/violation. What will happen to my beloved YouTube now???

Fortunately, the videos I usally seek are in little danger of becoming extinct. You see, my kids are all big science and nature buffs, so we have turned to YouTube in an effort to find more online videos that show plant and animal life in "live action" (I guess that's how to put it). Since beginning our homeschool journey using Sonlight Curriculum five years ago, we have become avid readers of Usborne books, and Usborne has sort of "reinvented" itself by publishing a series of books that are "Internet-linked." What that means is that as you page through the books, every so often (sometimes on every double-page spread) you'll see a box that says, "For a link to a website that shows . . ." and you can type the page number into a box on the Usborne website and be taken to various sites on the Internet that will have photos, videos and other information about whatever subject you're studying.

The thing is, videos are infinitely more appealing (visually) than are line drawings. I should amend that statement: I have seen some line drawings that are absolutely fantastic so I am not criticizing line drawings in general . . . and at this point I have probably lost you anyway because who cares about line drawings??! Anyway, because the Usborne links do not always lead us to videos of our subject, we turned to other resources, and YouTube quickly became a preferred source for all our video needs. You want to see a Venus fly trap in action? Want to watch a fly drown in a pitcher plant? Want to see a beautifully edited tribute to Keiko the killer whale? YouTube's got you covered!

I know I have joked about Sawyer's "obsession" with construction equipment, but he actually has quite a few other interests; I've already written about his predilection for sharks, snakes and crocodiles, but he is also fascinated by dinosaurs (what three-year-old isn't?), jellyfish, frogs, lions, tigers, penguins, ladybugs, the above-mentioned Venus fly trap . . . well, you get the point. And I love how you can go to YouTube and find home-made videos with all of these creatures in them! If you want to see Sawyer's favorite video, click here. And here is a picture to give you an idea of what it looks like when my kids are watching YouTube:

You can just see Darcy's elbow in the photo, and Peyton was on the other side and completely out of camera range. Some might argue that the kids are not learning when they're parked in front of YouTube (especially if they're watching the video I linked in the above paragraph!) but seriously, that dinosaur video has been viewed by Sawyer only a few (dozen, cough cough) times. Normally, they are oohing and aahing over magnificent footage of pods of whales surfacing off Newfoundland, schools of dolphins leaping alongside a boat in Florida, or jellyfish putting on a "light show" in an aquarium in New York City.

So you see, I don't think we're in any danger of losing the videos we love so much. However, last night Randy was dismayed to find that an old ELO video was apparently one of the first to go on the chopping block; he clicked on the link and was greeted with the following message: "This video has been removed due to violation of copyright law." Oh, the agony!