You Tube

About a year ago, when I needed a break from plowing the fields in the good ol’ cube farm, I’d head down to the IT guy’s office and we’d crack a cola and sit back and watch YouTube.com. There appeared to be no end to the goofy, geeky and just-plain-wrong homespun humor displayed in short Web-optimized videos just waiting for our search terms. Then, last winter, You Tube hit it big when the Saturday Night Live skit “Lazy Sunday,” with comedians Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg rapping about The Chronicles of Narnia, was posted and got nearly 5 million views. The SNL skits have been yanked since NBC made a stink about copyright, but with so many videos being posted on a daily basis, it’s difficult for those holding the rights to keep up. For example, I was able to find a video of Metallica—one of the major players in the lawsuit against Napster and other sites allowing unauthorized downloads of their music. So log on now before the corporate world gets wise and makes You Tube just as watered down as other conforming Internet outlets.