Do Google execs get special treatment on YouTube? Maybe. Last month, Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, spoke at the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s annual conference in Aspen. Among the topics covered were the value of an open Internet and the need for net neutrality rules. Soon thereafter, the Google public policy team posted their bosses’ speech on the (Google-owned) YouTube site. No problem with that, except that the clip runs some 55 minutes. Since early 2006, YouTube – to the consternation of many users — has limited videos to 10 minutes.
It’s not clear how the clip – one among several over-limit pieces by Schmidt on YouTube -made it past YouTube’s time limit cops. The policy itself seems clear. A notice on the YouTube “Help Center” site states clearly:
“You can no longer upload videos longer than ten minutes regardless of what type of account you have. Users who had previously been allowed to upload longer content still retain this ability, so you may occasionally see videos that are longer than ten minutes.”
YouTube does have some premium memberships, such as “director” and “guru” that confer special privileges – but extra-long videos it not among them. Google – which purchased YouTube last fall – has hinted it may change the rule, but for now it stands. At least for other people.
Net neutrality proponents consistently argue that regulation is needed to prevent Internet service providers from favoring their own content. Google itself has cited “prioritizing data packet delivery based on the ownership or affiliation…of the content” as a neutrality violation that should be banned. Perhaps the Google staff thought it was so important to get the word out about net neutrality that neutrality itself had to be discarded.
Perhaps there is a more innocuous explanation for the extra 45 minutes on this video, maybe some generally-applicable exception buried in the YouTube rules. Barring that, Schmidt’s video may have to be cut back a bit.
Now, who wants to tell the boss he spoke too long?
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.