Youtube Web Site

The world's most popular free video website is getting into the pay-per-view business. Google Inc.'s YouTube announced Wednesday that it will make movies from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance film festivals available for online rental. It's the first time that YouTube, which historically has offered its video free, will charge users. Offering a pay service is a clear sign that Google, which has struggled to make a profitable business out of YouTube after buying it in 2006 for $1.65 billion, is looking for new ways to monetize the service.

Karen Herman wants Bill Cosby to have his rightful place in history. TV history, that is. Herman, a former journalist who is the director of the Archive of American Television in North Hollywood, has wanted to add Cosby's tale to the archive's collection of videotaped oral histories for years, but so far no luck. Scheduling problems, it seems. "He's so critical to TV history," she says. "Mel Brooks is another one." And another one on Herman's wish list.

When Brooke Brodack, a 20-year-old receptionist who lives in western Massachusetts with her mom and younger sister, started getting fan mail from Carson Daly's people, she figured it was all a joke, that somehow she'd been punked. But strange things can happen when you post goofy homemade videos of yourself on YouTube.com, the website that the TV industry can't decide whether it should embrace or dread.

In one video, a U.S. soldier blasts insurgent gunmen with a heavy sniper rifle as the room fills with smoke. In another, members of an Iraqi family throw their arms around soldiers, weeping and rejoicing, after learning that their kidnapped relative has been freed. The U.S. military has opened a new front in the Iraq war: cyberspace.

The most popular site for watching video on the Internet may soon get Hollywood's most popular movies. Google Inc.'s YouTube is in talks with several major studios -- including Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate -- about streaming movies when the DVDs become available in rental stores and kiosks, according to sources familiar with the situation. The move represents a bold gambit for the entertainment giants, which have been cautious in embracing the Internet out of fear it would disrupt relationships with major retailers and undercut lucrative DVD sales.

On a sunny May afternoon, teenagers dismissed from a Beverly Hills middle school gathered outside a restaurant four blocks away and gossiped about their friends. Amid lots of giggling, the conversation among the eighth-graders touched on the prom and limousines but was dominated by an unflattering assessment of a girl at school, who was called a "spoiled brat" and a "slut." "I don't hate her, it's just, I wouldn't prefer to hang out with her for a million years," one girl declared.

The YouTube video from Shorewood High School in Washington state looks normal when it starts. It's a lip dub -- a lip sync of a song done in a single take with numerous students taking part -- of the infectious Hall & Oates tune, "You Make My Dreams." There are numerous lip dubs online, and this one is pretty much like any other, beginning with an enthusiastic girl running through the halls of the school, mouthing the words. But there are some odd things going on. Some students around her are doing impossible-looking acrobatics as the camera passes by. Objects fly up from the floor.

Second in a series of occasional Web Scout mysteries, in which we investigate some of the questions haunting the Web entertainment world. In this installment, we get to the bottom of the UFO videos currently raging on YouTube. -- Though the island in the Caribbean shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic was spared a direct hit from Hurricane Dean this week, it may be that other, stranger entities made landfall there.

No wonder YouTube is so popular. All the effort to boost children's self-esteem may have backfired and produced a generation of college students who are more narcissistic than their Gen X predecessors, according to a new study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. And the Internet, with all its MySpace and YouTube braggadocio, is letting that self-regard blossom even more, said the analysis, titled "Egos Inflating Over Time."

Lonelygirl15 appears to be an innocent, home-schooled 16-year-old, pouring her heart out for her video camera in the privacy of her bedroom. But since May, her brief posts on the video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking hub MySpace have launched a Web mystery eagerly followed by her million-plus viewers: Who is this sheltered ingenue who calls herself "Bree," and is she in some sort of danger -- or, worse, the tool of some giant marketing machine?

The world's most popular free video website is getting into the pay-per-view business. Google Inc.'s YouTube announced Wednesday that it will make movies from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance film festivals available for online rental. It's the first time that YouTube, which historically has offered its video free, will charge users. Offering a pay service is a clear sign that Google, which has struggled to make a profitable business out of YouTube after buying it in 2006 for $1.65 billion, is looking for new ways to monetize the service.

The lawyers defending California's Proposition 8 and its ban on same-sex marriage urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday to block video coverage of this week's trial in San Francisco. The attorneys filed an emergency appeal with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and argued that their client's right to a fair trial would be jeopardized if each day's proceedings were posted on YouTube.com. The trial "has the potential to become a media circus," wrote attorney Charles Cooper. "The record is already replete with evidence showing that any publicizing of support for Prop.

The YouTube video from Shorewood High School in Washington state looks normal when it starts. It's a lip dub -- a lip sync of a song done in a single take with numerous students taking part -- of the infectious Hall & Oates tune, "You Make My Dreams." There are numerous lip dubs online, and this one is pretty much like any other, beginning with an enthusiastic girl running through the halls of the school, mouthing the words. But there are some odd things going on. Some students around her are doing impossible-looking acrobatics as the camera passes by. Objects fly up from the floor.

U2's concert at the Rose Bowl shattered attendance records at the venue as more than 100,000 people, including Rose Bowl staff, took in the band's Southern California stop on its 360 Tour, according to the venue's general manager, Darryl Dunn. Yet the number of fans who watched the concert online probably dwarfs that tally. Final figures aren't in yet from Google-owned YouTube, which streamed the concert live, but the page housing the concert has received close to 7 million "channel views."

Music videos from Green Day, Jay-Z and Linkin Park will begin reappearing on YouTube as soon as December, the result of a multiyear agreement reached with Warner Music Group Corp. The Internet's dominant video site and one of the world's largest music companies had been locked in a dispute over the value of music videos, some of the most popular content on YouTube, whose young viewers are coveted by advertisers. Licensing talks reached an impasse late last year, resulting in Warner's videos being pulled from the site.

The most popular site for watching video on the Internet may soon get Hollywood's most popular movies. Google Inc.'s YouTube is in talks with several major studios -- including Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate -- about streaming movies when the DVDs become available in rental stores and kiosks, according to sources familiar with the situation. The move represents a bold gambit for the entertainment giants, which have been cautious in embracing the Internet out of fear it would disrupt relationships with major retailers and undercut lucrative DVD sales.

U2 lead singer Bono, well known for his ONE campaign against poverty, has turned his focus to a charity case closer to home: the ailing music industry. The rocker is credited with bringing together Universal Music Group, the world's biggest music company, and YouTube, Google Inc.'s online video site, for talks that on Thursday resulted in a partnership to launch a music video service featuring professionally produced content from the label's big-name acts.

Walt Disney Co., seeking to broaden the audience for its broadcast and cable shows on the Internet's most popular video site, struck a deal Monday with Google Inc.'s YouTube to distribute short-form content from ESPN and ABC. The agreement would extend the Internet reach for ESPN's sports highlights and ABC News updates and provide another outlet for video snippets taken from the ABC broadcast network and ABC Family cable channel shows.

Hollywood talent agencies pride themselves on placing their star clients into the biggest movies and TV shows. Now, add YouTube to the list. William Morris Agency, one of the largest talent firms, is in talks for a deal that would funnel its clients -- both actors and consumer brands -- into videos created for the Internet giant.

Karen Herman wants Bill Cosby to have his rightful place in history. TV history, that is. Herman, a former journalist who is the director of the Archive of American Television in North Hollywood, has wanted to add Cosby's tale to the archive's collection of videotaped oral histories for years, but so far no luck. Scheduling problems, it seems. "He's so critical to TV history," she says. "Mel Brooks is another one." And another one on Herman's wish list.