A ‘desi’ YouTube -- really?
In its Indian avatar, a surprising number of videos on the website are pornographic and explicit in their title and content.
DEEPTI BHARTHUR and TENZIN PALDON say spirituality videos coexist with porn videos on YouTube India.
When three ex-Pay pal employees got together in 2005 and created a video-sharing website from their garage, they wouldn¿t have dreamed that they would be bought by Google for a whopping 1.65 billion dollars, have several country specific versions and be banned by a number of countries all within a period of two and a half years. It¿s the kind of progress that makes you believe that the IT revolution actually exists.
On the 6th May 2008, an entry on the YouTube blog by Sakina Arsiwala read like this - "Describe something that unites magicians, entertainment entrepreneurs, science scholars, singers, media veterans, government officials and a whole lot more... We call it -- drum roll -- YouTube India". YouTube India - http://in.youtube.com has all the original videos from the Youtube global site www.youtube.com. The only difference being the "Indian Lens" that filters the content and shows the videos other people in India are watching on the video charts.
In its Indian avatar, a surprising number of videos on the website are pornographic and explicit in their title and content. Spirituality videos coexist with videos with explicit pornographic content in Youtube India. As a curious first time visitor, it¿s a bolt out of the blue when a site that you love so much precisely for its clean nature turns all playboy on you. When contacted, a YouTube spokesperson said "In our Community Guidelines (www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines ) we clearly state that inappropriate material is not allowed on our site. If such content is uploaded in violation of the Guidelines, it is typically flagged by members of our community and promptly removed by our staff. We disable the accounts of repeat offenders. In addition to that, our reviewers mark some content as "restricted" when it deals with themes that are only appropriate for adults. Users under 18 cannot view restricted videos." In the Indian version of the website, however the kinks in quality control are definitely showing. One can only hope that they are overcome soon.
So what does YouTube India offer besides the pornography? Given the fact that one can¿t really dictate the flow of user generated content, Google India has collaborated with several mainstream media agencies to have dedicated sections and high resolution videos running on the site. These include NDTV, Rajashree productions, Zoom etc. Google has also reached an understanding with the IITS where they can upload classroom lectures and e-learning videos on the site for free. Apart from this, videos that are popular on the site include Bollywood video clips, patriotic videos, and IPL footage.
Youtube India gives a person a lot to think about, the first of many questions being, do we need an Indian version? Well that¿s the interesting thing about the media; it successfully creates needs where there are none felt. The fact is that the site though hugely successful and popular is not exactly a money spinner for Google with the company putting down YouTube¿s earnings as negligible in a regulatory filing. The Internet giant is therefore looking at better segmented markets for enhancing ad revenue, striking profitable partnerships with other content providers and paid services to start making the big bucks. This is where launching it in India; with its huge demographic of net-savvy people makes smart sense. Having said that, let¿s not assume that Google is the archetype corporate demon that we all love to hate so much. It is widely known the costs of running YouTube are huge with its bandwidth expenditure alone amounting to $ 1 million a day. With the increasing number of enthusiastic uploaders taking up more and more space, YouTube definitely has to be able to move beyond being a casual platform of sharing videos without becoming a promotional portal. If it should manage to achieve this balance, YouTube will go down in history as a quintessentially good idea, not one that got horribly garbled along the way.
Whether the average Indian surfer takes to YouTube India over the global version or remains completely indifferent either way, is solely dependent on how the site manages to provide and facilitate content and services apart from user contributions. We¿ll just wait and watch and write the occasional opinion piece.
