This Video Is Not Available on Mobile

I reposted a stupid little video from a friend on Facebook the other day… It's a perky little song from a sweet little thing singing about skipping through the city and holding hands… only there are skulls, bleeding eyeballs and other disturbing animation. I can't help myself… It's… mesmerizing…

It's so mesmerizing that I just had to share it with a friend at the pub. Only on my phone I get the message 'This video is not available on mobile.' I figure it's one of those stupid Verizon things like the weird way Skype dials a number in Atlanta rather than using the Internet… I got around it by opening Opera on my phone and watching it on Youtube. PONPON way-way-way PONPON way PON way PONPON…

Only I discovered this morning that my 'workaround' doesn't work anymore. Turns out it's a Youtube thing. When you upload a video there's a setting for 'Syndication':

• Yes, make this video available on mobile phones and TV. Note, the video may not be available on all devices due to copyright or licensing issues.
• No, this video should not be available on mobile phones and TV.

By default it allows syndication, but if you say 'No' then I can't even watch it on Youtube.com on my mobile device. I have to pull out my laptop to watch it.

Which is total bullshit.

Youtube has made some arbitrary definition for 'mobile.' I can't watch it on the android tablet that I got Markie for the salon -- the thing doesn't even use a 'mobile network' -- it's on a regular old wireless, just like my laptop and the desktop computers. But I CAN use my laptop with a 3G wireless card and Youtube doesn't think it's 'mobile content.' So 'mobile' is defined by operating system, not whether or not you're annoying the other passengers on the bus in the morning.

Oh, and even though the option is called 'Syndication' the video plays fine embedded on Facebook, but not on my blog… because apparently Facebook is different.

At the end of the day, Youtube has given the publishers the option of artificially restricting access to their videos, and I'm sure it's in response to someone in a board room who thinks that they can somehow release content online and keep it chained up, but every time I see the blurry world of 'mobile' treated as something that doesn't have the same rules as the 'Internet' I worry that someone at some other boardroom is making a deal that will make it that much harder for me to use the tools that I need to run my business.

You know, tools like Youtube videos of 20 year old Japanese girls dancing in cute little outfits.