Rotten in the State of Youtube

Never before have I read two articles that seemed so relevant to each other, despite being on completely different subjects. The first article, found here, tells us that Denmark, of all places, is the happiest country in the world. And you thought it was Disneyland, you fools. Yes, apparently #2 and #3 are Puerto Rico and Colombia, respectively. The United States, while the nation with the greatest economy, falls to a pitiful 16th in the happiness rankings. Oddly enough, the study was conducted by Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan with NSF money. Come on, man, the government bribes you and you don't come through for us?

What's your first reaction to this information? I know what mine was: "Maybe there's not so much of a direct correlation between money and happiness." OK, I'll admit that was also pointed out in the article above. The article states that there are many other factors involved in determining a nation's happiness index, and apparently personal freedom is a much more important issue than money.

So I cruise around the BBC news website for a half-second and I see this article, which states that the courts have ruled that Google (owners of Youtube) must hand over its viewing log to Viacom. The log contains the login IDs, IP addresses, and video clip details. In case anyone reading hasn't yet taken sides in the two seconds it's been since you read that sentence, let's go over some television channels Viacom owns: Comedy Central, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, MTV2, and CMT. In other words, Viacom can be held directly responsible for 83.7% of the bullshit in modern culture. (Politics accounts for 16.1%, and the rest are remnants from the time before the creation of MTV.)

I could go on to talk about what this means in terms of privacy considerations, but instead, I'd like to give you more of an idea of how evil Viacom is. This blog entry details a story where a guy in North Carolina made a cheesy little elect-me-to-the-local-school-board commercial and posted it simultaneously on Youtube. The folks at VH1 grabbed it (without informing him) and used it for Web Junk 2.0 (which I'm assuming makes them money). Then when the guy decides to post the segment of the show that makes fun of his original video, Viacom alleges copyright infringement and has the video pulled. That's the kind of sick company we're dealing with here.

So drawing from the conclusions of both articles, we can observe a number of points. (1) Viacom is an evil bastard corporation that regularly clubs the baby seals that are our minds. (2) Viacom has repeatedly assaulted personal freedom and privacy in the name of copyright protection, or at least revenue protection. (3) For cultural happiness to flourish, personal freedoms are more important than money. Therefore, (4) Viacom is deliberately making us unhappy. Of course, I could have proved that last one just by showing you an episode of Cribs ...Flavor of Love ...whatever's currently on Nickelodeon ...Rock of Love Girls: Charm School 2 ...Hogan Knows Best ...The Real World ...anything on any Viacom-owned television station.

What should we do, then? I would have suggested merely getting your video fix you're just jonesing for from Youtube, but even then Viacom apparently has rights to access information about you. Dear lord, what if, in order to protect ourselves from the evil television behemoth, we have to return to physical activity or something as dismal as reading to keep ourselves entertained? Come to think of it, I've been meaning to re-read Hamlet after all these years. Wasn't he the Prince of Denmark? Man, he must have been one happy guy.