Thoughts on Ch. 15 of Image Ethics in the Digital Age

"Those who make and those who critique family films in the digital age must be particularly sensitive to the filmmakers' duties toward the subjects of their films and to the potential for wide dissemination of seemingly intimate family portraits." p. 340

In this digital era, the place for "wide dissemination of intimate family portraits" is YouTube. An example of this is the famous home video “Charlie Bit My Finger,” which has been viewed millions of times. The majority of YouTube content is not taken from other sources - an estimated 88% is “new and original content” (Wesch). Among these are the home video. Besides Charlie Bit My Finger, there are countless videos featuring pets and babies as their subject. Every pet video on YouTube, which has a whole genre unto itself, is a home video. 

Before YouTube, the arena for home videos to be widely viewed was the tv show "America's Funniest Home Videos." With this show, it was clear if consent was given. No doubt permission and consent forms had to be sign before the videos aired. But this is not the case with the Internet, where a video file can easily be taken and uploaded with no thought to the owner or subject. On YouTube there is no regulation of such things, and a much larger potential for reaching a mass audience.

In addition, on YouTube there is always the possibility of a family home video being edited, misconstrued or remixed into something misrepresentative of the filmer/subject's intentions. This is an intrinsic part of YouTube, where the prevalence of this intermingling of ideas on YouTube is so high that it is estimated that approximately 15% of all video content is derived from remixes or remakes (Wesch). "Charlie Bit My Finger" has been remixed and redone over 4,000 times (Wesch).

Professor Wesch's study of YouTube: