Watch the Times Square Alliance video feed live from New York tonight via Mogulus beginning at 5:45 PM EST:

And Hulu at 10PM EST:

Military propaganda efforts in new media can be entertaining to watch, the U.S. Department of Defense has its Multinational Force Iraq (MNFIRAQ) YouTube channel. Iraqi insurgents and other terrorist organizations have an online video operation in the form of attack videos uploaded to YouTube and across the web. Palestinian militant group Hamas had a YouTube clone until it was recently shut down, and now the Israel Defense Forces have taken to YouTube.

But how do you determine what can stay and what can go? YouTube has taken steps to remove content from militant organizations that post videos of attacks on American soliders in Iraq and propaganda posted by terrorist organizations. Now they have taken the step of removing IDF videos of Israeli operations in Gaza - one with more than 10,000 views.

From the IDF YouTube channel:

We are saddened that YouTube has taken down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF’s operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip. As the State of Israel again faces those who would see it destroyed, it is imperative that we in the IDF show the world the inhumanity directed against us and our efforts to stop it. It is also worth noting that one of the videos removed had the highest number of hits (over 10,000) at the time of its removal.

Jewish Daily Forward reports

The removal appears to have been the result of a function of YouTube, which flags videos when a certain threshold of complaints is passed and routes them to an employee who decides whether or not to remove them. Some IDF videos showing footage of bombings were allowed to remain, apparently because they did not pass the threshold of complaints.

So YouTube is now employing a combination of crowdsourcing and a human censor to determine what is worthy of calling a TOS violation, but what if it’s news? It’s a thin line - how do you make that call?

TVWeek’s Daisy Whitney wrote today about her “Cord-Cutting” experiment, and how it isn’t as much of a paradox as it may seem.

I generally agree with Daisy on most points (pre-roll being the main exception). Today is no different. However, she did include some comments from other people about what they, as cord cutters, want and expect from media companies.

Those of you who know me, and have heard me rant about consumers being greedy and not understanding or willing to participate in a fair value exchange, will not be shocked. But look at this list of “wishes” that Daisy included in her column and tell me how we are going to build an ecosystem that makes money and still provides the following:

“I want Mac Mini/Apple TV baby called the Mac TV to allow free over-air TV and full access to all U.K. online video services.”

“TV syndication via RSS feeds (think podcasts of prime time)”.

“Better access to the shows/channels I watch at an affordable rate. I’m thinking mainly sports here.”

“There needs to be a reliable source for reviewing/rating/referring people to Web shows.”

“I also want HBO shows, Showtime shows, BBC shows. Choice basically to create my own menu.”

“We need a better way to aggregate the content we like from various distributors. And I’m not talking about a box.”

“Centralized live sports streaming would be nice.”

“I want a truly networked home entertainment system.”

Bah, humbug. Or, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!” Either way, most of these aren’t going to happen, or happen any time soon. Others are already available if you’d just choose to use them. Networked home entertainment system? Uh, very much a reality. Aggregate content without a box? Miro works nicely, and so does Boxee if you can get a beta account.

You want free access to international content that you wouldn’t normally have access to? What’s ‘affordable’ anyway? Pretty sure they meant “free.” You want free HBO? How does HBO feel about that? Centralized live sports streaming? Sure, but aren’t the games that are blacked out in your area going to be blocked over IP, too? Oh, right, just ignore the deals that the NFL has with the current slew of broadcasters.

I’m not knocking Daisy, nor any of the people she interviewed. I just think they sound more like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory — “I want it nooooow, daddy!” We’re still an emerging medium, and we should give ourselves the time and room to grow. This isn’t the time to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

One solution, however, does exist today that would enable all of those wishes to come true. Ad support.

Google has teamed up with NORAD again this year. Follow Santa in Google Video and with Geo-located photos from Panaramio, and updates through Google Maps for Mobile and @noradsanta on twitter.

Above: Santa Passes over London, England

Despite dire warnings, layoffs, and general crappy market conditions, online video is expected to buck the downward trend, according to Mark Walsh over at Mediapost.

Richard Glosser from CondeNet said it best: “We certainly expect monetization is going to ramp up as our video footprint grows and it becomes more and more important to us.”

Hear that? GROWTH. How much you ask? According to Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Forbes.com, video currently contributes about 5% of Forbes.com revenues, but he expects that proportion to double to 10% in 2009 and reach as high as 30% to 50% in the coming years.

Hats of to Mark Walsh for finding some positive news to write about while everyone else is waiting for their death rattle.

Everyone knows that online video is about YouTube and porn, right? Wrong. The Chinese disagree.

A woman who posted her own sex video on her website has been arrested.

Porn, unfortunately, is illegal in China. Don’t they know how much revenue it drives? Who are the earliest adopters of online technology? Yes, the porn industry.

Nice “welcome back from vacation” post, huh?

Not that there’s anything funny about laying off people, at least this video lightens the mood.

After much speculation Joost has announced the shutdown of their downloaded player app and P2P video service as of tomorrow. If content is king then Joost is dead. But if user experience is king they may still have a shot, at least in the form of acquisition by a mainstream media company seeking to increase online engagement.

Joost.com gets excellent traffic, they have major content partners (if weak content) and a development team which took a while to fail, but learned from their mistakes to create a pretty solid video site from a user standpoint.

Unlike Hulu’s oft-quoted desire to “fail fast” Joost has taken forever and spent a boatload of money on projects they wound up shutting down. Finally, they have come to the conclusion many including us reached long ago:

Joost needs to forget about P2P, forget going global, and focus on building a platform which is technologically above and beyond anything else, which meets the expectations of the wide range of users consuming content online and delivers a better value exchange for both users and marketers.

Now we have another competitor to Hulu, the new Sling.com and the upcoming CBS site TV.com. Joost’s best hope at this point is that CBS, years behind other major media companies in their digital efforts buys them for their technology and empowers their engineers to disengage CBS from its historic blind reliance on third parties to make Joost technology for video and social engagement the core of the CBS interactive unit.

We’re busy working ourselves to death in online video, it may be some time until we come up for air. For now enjoy the dulcet tones of Ron Burgundy and the Channel Four News Team.

Legally after the 15 or 30-second pre-roll above, or ad-free on YouTube:

From one of my favorite creative shops, Deep Focus, comes the latest generation of user participation contents. Check out Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub contest. Upload a video of yourself (or or your dog) lip syncing to the Conchords “Hiphopopotomus vs Rhymnoceros.”

Entries accepted through January 25th. Oddly, that’s a week after the new season premiers.