YouTomb, or the empty shells live on

One form of the spooky, haunted internet is the existence of dead sites.  These appear because of abandonment, or sometimes because their primary content has been gutted.  Case in point for the latter: YouTomb, a skeletal archive of YouTube pages where the videos have been deleted.

Note that the primary motivation for removing content is alleged copyright infringement.  YouTomb is one after-action battlefield for the copyright wars.

The scope of the project is huge, suggesting a vast wasteland of empty page shells:

YouTomb, which launched about two months ago, is currently monitoring close to a quarter-million videos, and Jansen says the team is eager to expand its scope. Currently, the site only monitors popular YouTube videos...

It's worth comparing these pages to Gothic architecture, which was originally based on buildings emanating from power, but rendered uncanny by the passage of time.  YouTube lacks the military, aristocratic, or ecclesiastical context for 18th-century structures, but quite readily conforms to the corporate power of our time.

(via Smartmobs)

Comments

[Alan Levine]

What a fab project, and instigated by students, yay.

One of my favroite long running web sites is Ghost Sites, by Steve Baldwin, who has been tracking disappearing web sites since 1996

http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites

"Ghost Sites of the Web: Where Dead Sites Live On... Where Web Disasters Are Still Fresh"

Identifying and critiquing aging, abandoned, and derelict web sites since 1996. Includes a Web 1.0 screenshot library, essays, and "The Museum of Interactive Failure."