YouTube Becomes ‘DeathTube’ For Saddam

Where are those cat videos now, Brian Williams?

We avidly track YouTube’s most-watched videos page, and it seems YouTube turned a yet another corner with Saddam Hussein‘s “hasty” hanging this weekend. The networks — like one TVNewser “insider” surmised — seemed to react to what footage was surfacing on YouTube and elsewhere, and often used its Web proliferation as a starting point, putting YouTube in the crosshairs of an international story. The Daily Reel put it this way:

The execution of Saddam Hussein is one of the most watched videos on the Internet. Not since Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin’s death by stingray attack has a snuff video been so widely disseminated across the web.

Until now, YouTube’s chief concern has been growing while simultaneously traversing a mine-field of copyright infringement. But taking the temperature of YouTube’s “most-watched” page, Google’s $1.65 billion toy faces a bigger problem than copyright issues: Sex and, moreover, clip-spam:

RELATED:

Saddam’s YouTube Execution [Red Herring]

An Overnight Death Watch, and Then Images of the Hangman’s Noose [NYT]

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