Hasta La Gadget!

Poor, poor Justin Bieber. He created some music, and all he wanted to do was share it with the world. The teenage Canadian pop star attempted to upload his new song “Pray” to his YouTube account, only to be blocked by the service’s copyright protection software. The Google-owned video sharing site informed him that the content was the property of Universal Music Group–his label.

Bieber was pissed, so naturally he took to Twitter to air his aggressions, writing, “yo youtube…how u gonna block my own song?!?!?!” Oh snap, son.

Scorned, the Biebz turned to the arms of another, “dear youtube…we started this journey and now u r cheatin on me with this vevo chica…i see how it is…i will be over here with facebook,” he followed up in another tweet.

YouTube tweeted back, stating, “sorry about the upload pain around ‘Pray’. That’s between you and your label but we love you [both] so let’s figure this out!” Alas, Bieber would not stick around to find out if the site would make good on its promise. He did indeed upload the video to YouTube. Again, on Twitter, “no one keeps my music from my fans. nobody.”

Larry and Sergey, consider yourselves warned. 

YouTube was buzzing this week over made-up conspiracy theories, cloud formations over the California coast, the launch of Kinect for the XBox 360, and the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops for PCs and consoles. Some of those things made for great videos, others really didn’t. Regardless, we sifted through some of the trending videos at YouTube again this week to bring you some predictably awesome Kinect-related moments, a eulogy for an incredible athlete, and some young athletes with a few tricks up their sleeves.
 

We weren’t completely in love with Google TV’s YouTube Leanback experience when we gave the platform a run through, but that could change now that the YouTube Remote app has been released to the Android Market. Users pair the devices simply by signing into YouTube Leanback on the TV or PC and the app on the phone with the same account, then select a video on the phone and send it to the bigger screen with a press of a button. At least, that’s how it should work. TechCrunch got a hands on with the new app and a new Topics sorting system for the site during a demo and found some potential, however trying it on one of our devices elicited a slew of crashes before we eventually got everything synced up and working. QR code’s after the break so you can have a go of your own.

Update: Once we got everything rolling, we were able to get a better impression of the app. While it was a bit slow to open on our Galaxy S phone, once it is up, it worked smoothly, scrolling side to side through various queues of types of content and our favorites list. While the task of pulling up Leanback in a browser window or even on a Google TV device makes it ill-suited for viewing just one video at a time, where it excels is building a up a queue of videos and sending them over all at once. It will work on multiple screens at the same time as well, but there’s no Airplay-style syncing to be had, if one of them starts to slow down or buffer it will simply continue lagging behind, and without any volume controls or ability to reach other functions, you’ll still need to keep other remotes handy.

Continue reading YouTube Remote app released, controls Leanback on GTV or PC from your Android phone

YouTube Remote app released, controls Leanback on GTV or PC from your Android phone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Less than 48 hours after Turkey lifted its two-year ban on YouTube, a court in Ankara dropped the hammer again and ordered the country’s ISPs to re-block the video sharing site. The ban had been lifted because a number of videos featuring Deniz Baykal, a former Turkish opposition leader, were removed from YouTube citing copyright violations following negotiations between the Turkish government and Google. The Turkish court claimed the videos in question were insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the country, and in Turkey insulting Ataturk is a crime.

However, as soon as the ban was lifted, YouTube concluded that the videos in question did not violate copyright and re-instated them, which caused the Turkish courts to reinstate the ban. According to BusinessWeek, most Turks who want access to YouTube can get it anyway using proxy services, but for now, there’ll be no more funny cat videos in Istanbul without one.