Conclusion
We conclude that Youtube could perhaps be limiting access to its videos that are hosted on external platforms, such as Viikii, so as to reduce the problem of spambots.
A spambot is an automated computer program, or, more rarely, a script, designed to assist in the sending of spam. On Youtube, certain users may use spambots to increase the view count of their videos, to increase video ratings or to increase comments.
However, on Viikii, viewers are only able to view the Youtube videos and are not able to rate or comment on the videos. But, the Youtube server could be mistaking them for spambots and limits video access to them. Hence, users accessing Youtube videos via Viikii are unable to watch them.
Suggestions
Our group has come up with two suggestions to help solve the problem. The first of which is through the usage of verification codes and the other, more feasible suggestion, is to for Youtube and Viikii to form a partnership.
Verification Codes
If the issue of spambots is the root of the problem, then perhaps verification codes could be activated on the Viikii sites just like in Youtube. This would allow users to access the videos since they are able to prove that they are human.
However, there are some problems with this suggestion. It will be quite troublesome because Viikii viewers can still access the videos directly on Youtube, just that there will not any subtitling. Moreover, Youtube may not be too keen on enabling verification codes on an external platform, such as Viikii.
Partnership
The alternative suggestion, which we believe to be superior and more viable, is the forming of a partnership between Youtube and Viikii. With this partnership, Youtube can still host the videos on its own platform while Viikii can provide the subtitling service. Thus, viewers can then access the videos on Youtube with subtitles by enabling Closed Captions feature.
Closed Captions is a Youtube feature that is still in its Beta stage. What it does is that it transcribes audio that is in English and then translates it to various other languages. But the service is not very accurate and even hilarious at times. Closed captions works best when the speaker has very clear diction and does not use slang or colloquialism.
At this moment in time, Closed Captions is not able to transcribe audio in any other language other than English. Thus, Viikii still has an advantage since most of the dramas on Viikii are in Mandarin, Korean and Japanese and Closed Captions cannot transcribe and translate from these languages.
However, if Closed Captions improves to include such capabilities, Viikii’s usefulness will certainly come under threat. Therefore, one way to ensure Viikii’s survival is to propose that Youtube use the Closed Captions feature to transcribe audio in other languages other than English and then Viikii can assist Youtube with both the transcribing of the audio, as well as translation.
A possible problem of the partnership is the issue of revenue. Youtube relies on advertising revenue to make profits whereas Viikii is solely dependent on donations from its site. If a partnership is formed, they will have to decide who gets which share of the revenue.
Next Stage
In the next stage, we would firstly have to propose the idea of a partnership to both Youtube and Viikii. Moreover, we want to suggest to Viikii to copyright their subtitles through Creative Commons so that when a partnership with Youtube is formed, other subtitling websites will not be able to ‘steal’ their subtitles without their permission.
Our project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Singapore License.
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