Will YouTube Ban Videos Of Putting Your Head In The Sand Next?

from the how-does-this-help? dept

Wed, Sep 17th 2008 8:18pm — Mike Masnick

It appears that Google's YouTube subsidiary is caving to various government pressure concerning whatever videos the government doesn't like. This started a while back when Google gave in to pressure from Thailand's government to ban videos that made fun of the country's king. But, now the pace is ramping up. Last week, Google gave in to Senator Lieberman, agreeing to ban videos from terrorists, and the latest is giving in to pressure from the UK government to ban videos that show weapons used to intimidate people. Now, YouTube has always banned hate speech or threatening videos, so this new ban seems to go above and beyond that -- including videos that show weapons being used to intimidate that aren't threatening videos themselves. That seems pretty pointless again. The same videos will quickly appear on other sites, and rather than using YouTube as a way to track down anyone who might be breaking the law, Google is helping the UK government put their head in the sand and pretend no one ever is filmed doing anything bad with weapons.

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Filed Under: bans, online videos, political speech, uk
Companies: google, youtube

27 Comments

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Relonar, 17 Sep 2008 @ 9:26pm

All violence on the internet must be stopped! Think of the children and what they are learning through youtube. We could stop all bullying and violence in schools if the children weren't exposed to it on the internet. As long as these videos of guns, violence, and terrorism exist children will come to repeat these heinous acts in the schools.

I'm sorry 'bout that. I believe that, yes, there should be some limits (if the limits do not infringe on the established rights of the individual in the land that governs them), but I also believe that these limits should fall to the hands of government to enforce (China seems to have a pretty good grasp on this concept, or so I've been told). Asking the owner of the platform to police and filter seems like just another way to hide and obscure censorship.
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- Rory, 18 Sep 2008 @ 12:22am
  
  Re:
  What utter tosh. Lets ban everything because it all can potentially influence you to shoot your fellow man.
  
  Only legitimate cause of violence is the physical punishment of kids by their parents and this is because of people's inability to disciple appropriately through verbal reasoning/non-violent techniques.
  
  This, of course, requires intelligence.
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  - Haywood, 18 Sep 2008 @ 4:44am
    
    Re: Re:
    "Only legitimate cause of violence is the physical punishment of kids by their parents and this is because of people's inability to disciple appropriately through verbal reasoning/non-violent techniques.
    
    This, of course, requires intelligence."
    
    So you must be one of those people I see reasoning with a 2 year old, that's intelligent.
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    - nasch, 18 Sep 2008 @ 8:30am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      So you must be one of those people I see reasoning with a 2 year old, that's intelligent.
      
      I'm not sure where you're going with that. Are you suggesting that 2 year olds cannot be reasoned with? Because I assure you that they can.
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      - Haywood, 18 Sep 2008 @ 10:51am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        "I'm not sure where you're going with that. Are you suggesting that 2 year olds cannot be reasoned with? Because I assure you that they can."
        
        Yeah,,, right!
        
        I have experience, with that, and while you may feel a sense of accomplishment, the child will be less than impressed.
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- Relonar, 18 Sep 2008 @ 5:12am
  
  Re:
  Ever hear of content filtering??? maybe spend some time With your kids and they would not want to go to youtube and watch a kid shoot at stick figures of his mom and dad.
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2008 @ 6:08am
  
  Re:
  If you admire so much Chinese censorship, you're invited to move to China. I prefer having violent kids around than repressive governments and corporations.
  
  Let me go out on a limb and infer from what you're saying that you're 40+ or 50+ years old and/or ultra-religious (fundamentalist) christian... the Sarah Palin type of person. The large majority of the younger and/or educated population will be able to tell you that blaming gaming for school violence is just moral panic. If you don't believe me, I hope that you believe the Pew Research Center: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080917-the-kids-are-all-right-gamers-well-adjusted-civic-mind ed.html
  
  Banning content is a very slippery slope because what could seem to be sensible objections towards certain materials will rapidly turn into banning stuff just because someone doesn't agree with it or doesn't want it to be exposed to public scrutiny. For example, if you think that restricting access to public information is the way to go (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080918-federal-lawsuits-take-on-the-humble-hyperlink.html), then I feel obliged to disagree with you.
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- Relonar, 5 Feb 2009 @ 9:20pm
  
  Re:
  It seems my horrible structuring has gotten he better of me on that post and obscured my true thoughts
  
  for the record to show:
  The first paragraph was complete sarcasm
  
  As for the second...rereading it, haven't a clue today where I was going with that.
  
  I certainly do not think that these types of censorships are a good thing.
  
  The reference to China was supposed to point out an instance where I believe censorship has been taken way too far, but it seems I missed a key step in the logic when writing that post.
  
  The final sentence stands as is.
  
  I should have really proofed that before posting...I certainly see how vaguely and misrepresented my ideas were in that comment
  I hope that I didn't get too much scorn from the community on that one.
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JLE, 17 Sep 2008 @ 9:35pm

Then cartoons should be banned as well.
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takeit, 17 Sep 2008 @ 9:45pm

oh yea?
liberman doinks the king of thailand in london and makes the queen of england's kids watch at gun point .
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- Me, 17 Sep 2008 @ 10:11pm
  
  Re: oh yea?
  Hahaha!!!! Nice, prob true as well!!
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- KC, 18 Sep 2008 @ 1:18am
  
  Re: oh yea?
  Youtube has now banned making fun of Lie-berman doinking the king of Thailand, and making aforementioned British aristocracy watch
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RP, 17 Sep 2008 @ 10:12pm

Grammar Nazi
Thailand's government to ban videos ***critical of that made fun of*** the country's king. But, now the pace is ramping up

Opps :D Hate it when I do that
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- Mike (profile), 17 Sep 2008 @ 10:45pm
  
  Re: Grammar Nazi
  Oops. Fixed. Thanks!
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DFunny990, 17 Sep 2008 @ 11:46pm

UMmmm
First Ammendment??
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- Allen (profile), 18 Sep 2008 @ 12:34am
  
  Re: UMmmm
  No.
  
  I think that you will find that the First Amendment limits the power of the various branches of US government from creating laws that inhibit/prevent free speech.
  
  Google caving to some US Senator's request is wrong, but I dont think it's a constitutional issue.
  
  The UK government is certainly going overboard in making these requests, but last time I checked the UK was not one of the 52 states to which the [US] first amendment applies.
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  - Allen (profile), 18 Sep 2008 @ 9:53pm
    
    Re: Re: UMmmm
    UMmmm that should probably be "50 states" :blush:
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jFive NYC, 18 Sep 2008 @ 1:20am

You people need to read and understand the First Amendment before post what you think it means. Fudge Lieberman and YouTube for caving in to goverment pressure on running their PRIVATE business. I'm sure Google just didn't want another legal fiasco on their hands. That said, unlike sex which this country loves to censor, thank you very much Jerry Falwell. Violence can be avoided. Try taking it off YouTube instead of the television? Your focus is in the wrong problem. Try blaming the parents for not blocking sites, etc or for not doing their damn job as parents.
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xhi, 18 Sep 2008 @ 1:55am

I'm waiting for somebody to do the intimidation Challenge... Start off by intimidating people with knives and uploading it to youtube.. and progressivly move towards cuddly bears traversing through other objects such as scissors.. bottles.. broken bits of electronics.. large library books.. etc... The aim?.. to get the video banned. I'm pretty sure you could get banned for many innocuous objects :D
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Blatant Coward, 18 Sep 2008 @ 2:02am

Ok then in that case we'll need every copy of every movie ever made with a weapon in it confiscated by RIAA, even though they should have no power in England-from every citizen. They are used to being stoopid, and writing their own laws in bulk lots so they should be up to the task.

I believe the proper phrase here is "What utter knee biters." Sorry if Knee biters is one word.

George Lucas can re release all privately made movies with walkie talkies replaced in them that any citizens may want back for a "slight" retconning fee.
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Zaphod, 18 Sep 2008 @ 2:08am

I wonder if anyone will step in after this PR debacle?
Seems to me with YouTube losing it's vim and vigor as a sounding board, it's time for a new startup to move in.

Honestly, YouTube is beginning to seem more like TheirTube the way they are caving as of late (and getting in bed with DRM companies).

And this time, I think the new x-tube provider should remain somewhat unknown, and not sell out. Make it very clear that anything uploaded to their service is the user's responsibility, and all actions, including takedown, are up to the user (safe harbor).

It would also be nice to see the video available in non-proprietary standards (MP4/AAC), for instance where you have to download them through a java applet that displays ads during (and only during) the download to offset the cost of the bandwidth and protect the source (encryption/decryption).

But these are pipe-dreams, no one would be that smart.
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JL, 18 Sep 2008 @ 3:24am

what a relief....
Youtube was the last place that still showed people intimidating others with weapons, after we where able to ban the daily, incessant bombardment of violence from television.

Right?
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Hyrulio, 18 Sep 2008 @ 4:22am

They'll ban videos of people talking next, incase it offends anyone.

Then videos with music, incase any copyrights are broken, or the songs used offend people.

Then 'HowTo' videos, incase anybody is offended by being told what to do.

Eventually there will be no videos left. Then the terrorists win?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2008 @ 6:27am

Hmmm. I wonder if this might get Google to block vids of police abuses. After all, we wouldn't want to give anyone the idea that weapons could be used to indimidate...
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Charlie, 20 Sep 2008 @ 7:28am

censorship sucks
If your gonna ban anything that might be considered disturbing or offensive to other people then you might as well ban anything that could be considered, alliliated, or associated with imagination.
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Anonymous, 20 Oct 2008 @ 8:16pm

Youtube censors videos critical of the church of scientology
Videos and clips that are not infringing and clearly fair use are being arbitrarily removed by youtube staff for tos and dcma violations and are next to impossible to get put back. It seems that youtube needs to grow a pair and stop playing the censor board and start playing fair.
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Pussywillow, 16 Dec 2008 @ 3:16pm

The Internet Causes Bullies?
Wrong. Humannature causes bullies. There were bullies in school long before the Intardweb, before computers, before the discovery of electricity... It is a predatory nature & a fear & distrust of others - perceived as different or weaker - that is the issue. Banning video content doesn't prevent someone from being a worthless, walking pile of detritus. They will simply go elsewhere. I doubt that the genocidal maniacs who murdered inRwanda got the urge from watching YouTube video clips.
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