Solo Solo Travel is one of my favourite YouTube channels to watch before bedtime. It’s a type of ASMR, I guess, like a soothing digestif to help me wind down for sleep – mostly-wordless videos of someone traveling around Japan on various forms of transport. The thing I love most about the videos are the captions the filmmaker has added to describe what they’re doing/seeing. This person is an underrated comedy genius. Perfect timing, perfect phrasing. My wife and I watched this one the other night, where the person is traveling around one of Japan’s islands on one of the most exclusive trains in the world (pretty niche content!) and belly-laughing our way through the entire thing.
Tag Archives: youtube
Herp Derp YouTube Comments
Speaking of stupid comments, I recently installed the Herp Derp extension for Chrome. It turns every YouTube comment into “herp derp derp“, and it has dramatically improved my experience with that site.
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW A KOTAKU COMMENTER
Emily Gera’s great interactive fiction/hypertext critique of the level of discourse found in the comments section at Kotaku.
Youtube Considered a TV Station in Italy
We’d just been talking about how much we’re going to miss living in Rome. Now this happens.
According to a story in La Repubblica, under Italian law, Youtube and other similar sites, such as DailyMotion, [are now considered TV stations](http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2010/12/31/news/agcom_equipara_youtube_alle_tv-10738254/) ([bizarre English translation here](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=it&tl=en&u=http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2010/12/31/news/agcom_equipara_youtube_alle_tv-10738254/&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com)).
What does this mean? Well, naturally it means a tax (this is Italy, after all – some money has *got* to change hands). It also means that these sites will be obliged to prohibit access to content inappropriate for children in certain time slots. More importantly though, it means that the sites are now legally responsible for all user-content uploaded to them, meaning that if some [half-senile old fuck who controls half the media in the country](http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2010/6/29/28c85220-ca45-4cc2-a9e4-f8d94d040537.jpg) finds some of their content on there, he finally has someone to sue.
I have to be honest, if the owners of these sites decide that the easiest way to solve all these problems is to just block access from Italy entirely, I wouldn’t even be slightly surprised. That guy from [YouReporter.it](http://youreporter.it/) nailed it: “This is a legal absurdity and violence done to reality.”