(empo-utoobd) The short shelf life of videos

As you may know, I have been blogging since 2003, and have created a number of blogs over the last nine years.

For five months in 2006 and 2007, I authored a blog entitled KOET Synthetica Television Transcripts. The premise of this was that I (in my then-online identity of Ontario Emperor) was running a television station based in Guasti, California, and that the blog posts documented things that I broadcasted on my television station. (I had done something similar with a previous blog, KOER Synthetica Radio Transcripts.)

During the period that the KOET blog was active, I wrote a number of posts that linked to YouTube videos. The videos covered a wide range of topics: the Cure's song "A Forest"; Dana Carvey's impersonation of Tom Brokaw reading pre-recorded obituaries for Gerald Ford; some Kiira Korpi skating videos; and several other things that I found on YouTube.

I recently revisted that blog and discovered something interesting - every one of the videos that I linked to in 2006-2007 is no longer on YouTube.

A variety of reasons are given for the deletions of the videos, but the two major reasons for removal were copyright claims from various content providers, and termination of various accounts by YouTube. (I don't know if the accounts were "permanently disabled," or literally terminated.)

Since the KOET blog consisted solely of YouTube videos, this means that the KOET blog is today devoid of meaningful content. Compare this to my text-based blogs, some of which date back to 2003. They are also devoid of meaningful content, but at least there is some content there. (It's just not all that meaningful.)

And it's just not my blog that's affected. Check this 2009 post from Sparkups. And here's a 2006 post from Videomixer that can't be viewed in the United States. And check out this expired video.

For a variety of reasons, I prefer text posts to video posts. One of those reasons is evident here - why create a video post when it probably won't survive for more than a couple of years?