As an avid anime viewer (unfortunately), I frequently went on Youtube to watch anime episodes. A friend of mine once estimated that there are at least 90 shows on Youtube. And of course, they are rarely legal. I suppose the regulation that we shouldn’t upload anime episodes is already covered in the Agreement when we signed up, but, in my case, I truly recognized this social norm after Youtube and the companies took action.
To protect their products, the companies would sometimes coerce Youtube to delete the videos (e.g. “The video has been deleted per request of Funimation”). But Youtube would often delete the videos before the companies can knock on its door (e.g. “The video has been deleted due to term violations”). Youtube “raised its eyebrows” so that it can keep running without much lawsuits chasing after it, and so that the users can have a place to put up their original works and voice their opinions. I first noticed deletions at a much faster rate started a couple of months ago.
Other than “asking” Youtube to ban the videos, the companies/ organizations/ websites sometimes would ask the users directly. For example, according to Distant Horizon, an Avatar: the Last Airbender fansite, “ Nickelodeon has released a high-quality version of the Season 3 trailer shown at SDCC and have given it to AvatarSpirit.net. It's free to watch and download, and other fansites can host the video too, so long as NO ONE uploads it to YouTube or other file sharing sites. That's Nickelodeon's only request.”
*Avatar: the Last Airbender is a popular American-made anime, for those of you who don’t watch animes.
According to Wallace, on the internet, the Hobbian Leviathan is a figure of authority in which we give up some of our freedom in return for “the value and energy of the medium itself” (MacKinnon). In this case, the Leviathan takes the form of the Youtube people who hold the power to delete videos and ban users. If people are frustrated by getting kicked out or getting their favorite videos/episodes deleted, they would stop uploading/watching these videos – in other word, they would conform to the social norm. Though I doubt that the rule enforcement by the Youtube Leviathan would ever work completely since the not-so-legal videos are still pouring in despite their hard work. As far as I can tell, the “framework of trust” mentioned by Wallace has yet to be established on Youtube.
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You chose an interesting example for your post. The Youtube Leviathan that you discussed tries to protect the site from legal threats, but in doing so, it alienates a large portion of the community because videos they want to see are removed. Still, it does fulfill the "moderator" role that Wallace discusses. In this case, it's certainly the lesser of two evils because the site would likely be forced to shut down without it. Although the users may not like it, the Leviathan is acting in their best interests.
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