Two Univeristy alumni and founders of the video uploading web site YouTube visited campus this weekend after their recent 1.65 billion dollar sale to Google. The University of Illinois chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Reflections Projections Conference invited over 600 students from 10 universities.

Junior in software engineering Jesse Dearling at the University of Texas-Arlington says YouTube has changed society.

“YouTube, the impact that they’ve made on the internet is allowing people to distribute video content however they want to. Basically, they get to do YouTube their way. It’s given people a new voice.”

Since its launch in February 2005, the number of users has grown to 100 million per day. Senior in software engineering Mary Evans at Southern Illinois University, says the web site is the subject of controversy.

“The enforcement of copyright laws has come out of the woodwork since people are able to post stuff without much control.”

Despite this, YouTube is fighting back. The web site now implements video fingerprinting technology and allows users to tag potentially copyrighted material for removal.