About that excruciatingly awful Bank of America "One" video

You guys need to get a better understanding of what YouTube is.

YouTube is a place where people post videos of whatever they feel like, for fun, and for no other reason. It is not where huge companies like Bank of America buy media time for their advertising.

The infamous "Bank of America U2/One" video is NOT A TELEVISION COMMERCIAL.

Big companies like BoA frequently have corporate gatherings — parties, retreats, dinners, etc. — for the purpose of employee bonding or what's called "internal marketing." Because Bank of America recently completed a merger with another financial company called MBNA, they held one of these events.

For reasons you may come to understand once you've been working in the corporate world for a couple of years (and, truthfully, maybe not even then), groups of empoloyees (or "teams") frequently, at these types of events, put on skits, or perform songs. Years ago I worked at a high-tech company and led a group of marketing managers in the creation and performance of a skit that mocked one of our senior executive, a female vice president who was known for having a fondness for the color purple. I dressed up like her. Well, all I did was wear purple — and everyone understood that I was "playing" her.

But NO ONE FILMED ME DOING THAT. My god; if they had, I certainly never would have done it.

That's what you saw in that video. You saw a couple of BofA guys doing a skit at a corporate party. It was supposed to be private (and, even then, would have been embarassing enough). But someone in the crowd secretly filmed them, and put the film up on YouTube, thereby causing a flurry of outcry: from the two men involved, for embarassing them. From BofA, for making the company look ridiculous. And now, apparently, from Universal Music for the unauthorized broadcast of the U2 song.

Now, get back to your blogs and discuss the issues raised by this occurrence. Issues about invasion of privacy. How far is it OK to go in the name of free speech, when on the other end of it you are causing an individual great pain. Assuming it was BofA that requested the video be taken off YouTube, do you think Google (the company that now owns YouTube) did the right thing by complying, or should they have let it stand?

Examine what YouTube has done to change the rules of media and society.