Why are youtube URLS so confusing, am I missing something?

Why do youtube use combinations of upper and lower case letters in their URLS? In the newspaper I get it can be difficult to tell certain ones apart and surely this must be the case in lots
of media.Worst of all was one I was trying to find which had two underscores one after the other.'__'.
How are you supposed to tell if that's one,two or three?
Surely 11 numerical characters gives enough scope or more could be added.
Or am I missing something?It drives me nuts!

I'm taking about trying to input the URL I've got from The Guardian newspaper
Especially the 'Clip Joint' in the sport section.I've looked on their site but can't find any links there.

I feel the same way. It is like WWW.youtube.com/sUpeRcAliFriStiCeXpeAlid...

just copy and paste the url from your address bar or from the link at the side of the video

I'm sorry...I missed why we were supposed to care......

I agree, but I don't mind as much. If I wish to show a friend a Youtube video I simply copy and paste the link into an email, instant message, etc. I don't really know WHY they make the videos have their selected URL. It's probably just randomly generated with the upload of the video.

yes, you're missing definately one thing: Learn it how to use it.

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing the other day when in the newspapers they post a particular YouTube URL that is too hard to remember. I wish I could just "copy and paste" but that's not possible if you're reading it on the paper... LoL

My first guess was that they wanted to make the URLs unique so it will not overwrite a certain video or what not. My second thought was maybe for security reasons? I don't know... >_<