Video hosting services allow users to upload and store videos on their servers, saving on bandwidth and server maintenance costs. It has become popular with mobile phone video uploads and video blogging. Copyright issues remain a concern for some hosting companies.
A video hosting service allows a person to upload a video to its servers and it is kept indefinitely or for a set period of time. There are several benefits to using a video host, including not being liable for bandwidth, guaranteed uptime, and affordability. This service has grown in popularity with the increased use of mobile phones that can capture videos and automatically upload them to a website. It is also used for video blogging, with the blogger uploading the videos to a video host and link to it instead of uploading it to your own server. This way, the blogger uses less bandwidth with his web hosting company, which is often limited.
Once a person has recorded a video, they can upload it to a website by locating the file on their computer and providing the website with the path. Depending on the quality of the video, its size and the user’s Internet connection, a video can take seconds or hours to load. This process is often simplified when using a smartphone, usually with the phone pre-programmed to upload to a particular website. In both cases, however, the user is usually provided with a link to the video to share with friends and family once the upload is complete. On a smartphone, this link can often be easily emailed or instant messaged to contacts in the user’s address book.
The benefits of video hosting may vary, but its main advantage is that the user does not have to maintain their own servers to share videos. Having your own servers is usually not expensive, but usually requires a monthly fee. Also, if you upload a lot of videos or if your files are especially large due to the size and quality of the video, hosting videos without an ad-supported hosting company can be expensive.
Over the years, both film and music companies have expressed concerns about copyright issues related to video hosting. Some popular and well-known video hosting companies allow anyone to upload anything and just moderate after the fact. This leads to potentially offensive copyrighted music, movies, and content being displayed until a moderator removes it. Even in moderation, some copyrighted content remains because no one reports it or it gets uploaded by different people faster than mods can remove it.
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