YouTube: how it all began and its phenomenal success...

There are overnight success stories and then there is YouTube. Set up in 2005 by work colleagues Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in a garage, it was sold just over a year later for $1.65billion (£874 million).

Along the way the video sharing website became an internet phenomenon. The figures are astonishing. More than 200 million videos are watched every day on the site and 10 hours of new content posted on it every minute. 

One commentator once remarked that it is so ubiquitous that "if it's not on YouTube, it's like it never happened". 

For the uninitiated, YouTube, slogan Broadcast Yourself, is a sort of video vox populi. Its estimated 34 million registered users can "upload" their favourite video clips onto the site and thus broadcast them to the world. 

Their "user generated content" is not just home movies but clips of their favourite TV shows, films, sporting events and music videos. More...

See also: Google and Viacom reach deal over YouTube user data...

And this: If you hate cops, don't shoot a film with your 12-year-old son and post it on YouTube!!!

And this: YouTube videos and the Fair Use argument...

And this: French TV to sue YouTube for 100,000,000 Euros...