Should YouTube be a haven for free speech, or should it be a website subject to government intervention and forced to remove videos deemed unsuitable for the site?

I know the answer and so do you, and every right thinking person in the world also know the answer. Free speech is king, and although it means some unsavoury things get said, it is also the proper way to conduct things.

Someone Tell Lieberman

However, one person who doesn’t seem to believe in free speech, at least when it might be something anti-American being said is Joe Lieberman, US senator, and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Hulu is a fantastic service, offering Web television streams of some of the best shows currently on US television. It also has some great classic movies available on it.

Another reason Hulu is rated so highly, and has won so many admirers is the opportunity it offers for embedding, something which ABC still won’t offer even after a much needed update.

However, put the two things together and you run in to a problem, namely that a movie which has been embedded may at some point in the future disappear, and not be available any more.

The BBC iPlayer seems to be continuing its incredible pattern of growth since being relaunched last Christmas. The service has recently seen its 75 millionth programme request.

These 75 million programme requests have happened over the course of just 4 months from the end of December 2007 to April 2008, and the service has seen a percentage growth every month in that same period.

20% Growth

Growth between March and April was around 20%, with requests rising from 17.2 million in March to 21 million in April.

Virtually every Web user will have a Flash Player from Adobe installed, as it’s one of those must haves if you want to do anything multimedia on the Internet. But now, there is an updated version available, with many new features.

Here, Jef Pearlman of Public Knowledge discusses the possibilities it provides for online video distribution.

Flash Gets Flashier With P2P

If you haven’t heard yet, a beta of Adobe’s Flash Player Version 10 is available for download. It offers a host of new features, but one has implications that blow the others out of the water: built-in peer-to-peer. That’s right, all the tools necessary to build a p2p client will be built into the Flash plug-in.

Everyone who installs Flash 10 (and before long, that will be practically everyone) will soon have peer-to-peer clients running in their web browser of choice. What does this do? 

ABC made history when it launched the first full-episode online video player in 2006, but since then the service has been somewhat overshadowed by new pretenders such as Hulu and the BBC iPlayer.

But despite the faults the player has, ABC.com leads the way with 8.9 million unique users accessing the service in April, and it also leads in minutes spent per user.

Now the network has unveiled its plans for the player, and intends to deliver a much improved platform to match its market leader status.

Redlasso is a website which offers bloggers and site administrators the chance to embed video clips from TV shows, news programmes and sports events minutes or hours after they air on network television.

The site is currently in beta, and only open to about 18,000 users, but that hasn’t stopped the shit hitting the fan as the company today received a cease and desist letter from NBC, CBS and Fox over the copyrighted clips it is offering.

The letter, leaked by Silicon Alley Insider, claims that Redlasso has broken state and federal laws while causing the companies “serious and irreparable harm.” The companies are demanding an immediate ceasing of all the copyright infringements.

Social bookmarking has been around for a few years now, with Digg and Reddit probably the two biggest sites around.

Digg users can watch Kevin Rose and his chums discuss the latest stories doing the rounds on Diggnation but Reddit users haven’t had that opportunity. Until now.