I can see even more of the underlying metadata about my YouTube upload if I use YouTube’s Data API (v. If I then upload my video to YouTube, I can see a lot of metadata on my video’s YouTube page, including my YouTube user name, the date I uploaded the video, and information I added like the title and description: Some metadata visible on my YouTube video page. When I look in this database – here I used SQLite Manager, a Firefox add-on - I can see things like who I sent my video to, when I sent it to him (expressed in POSIX time), and which file I sent from my computer: Part of the Skype database that gets saved on my computer. Mac: /Users//Library/Application Support/Skype//main.db Skype automatically saves this metadata on my computer, in a database located here: If I transfer this video to someone using Skype, the Skype metadata shows the details of my data transfer. The “xyz” metadata from video shows you exactly where I was when I recorded the video. But if you look at its metadata – here I used the open-source tool MediaInfo - you can see information such as where and when I recorded my video, what type of camera I used, among other things: Just some of the metadata embedded in my video file. The video itself does not tell you very much. For example, here is a not-very-interesting 10-second video that I shot with my iPhone: What about video? Video, like phone conversations and emails, is just another type of data that has metadata. Here’s a typical email header, which contains the metadata of an email message: The header from an email message. Every time we create digital content or data, we also generate metadata (that we may or may not see). Why do we have metadata? Metadata, like the date and sender of an email message, is necessary for the functioning of digital content. Like any kind of information, it can be put to great use as documentation and evidence, or employed against people in nefarious ways. Clearly, metadata is a valuable source of information - sometimes just as valuable as the data it’s about!Īll human rights activists who create or use digital content should have a basic understanding of metadata. In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the metadata (the data about data) collected by the US government from our phone calls and emails.
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