YouTube vs Sen. Lieberman

[Jitway]

Terrorism may be unpopular, but speaking one's mind about the subject is free speech: That's the basis of a response this morning to one prominent US senator's call for YouTube to remove terrorist-oriented videos.

 

"While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view," answered the YouTube Team, after Google, the company that owns YouTube, received a letter from US Senator Joseph Lieberman (I - Conn.) asking for removal of all videos on YouTube produced by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

 

"Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers, and provide weapons training," the Senator wrote in his letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

 

"YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive, and amplified voice," according to Lieberman, who has previously supported other censorship initiatives around video games, movies, and other entertainment, and is Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

 

In a blog entry posted on both YouTube and Google, the YouTube Team responded by saying the members have looked at numerous videos pinpointed by Sen. Lieberman's staff as potentially violating YouTube's policies.

 

"We examined and ended up removing a number of videos from the site, primarily because the depicted gratuitous violence, advocated violence, or used hate speech," according to the blog entry.

 

However, most of the videos identified by the Senator's staff did not contain violent or hate speech content and "were not removed because they do not violate our Community Guidelines," wrote The YouTube Team.

 

Team members also noted that hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day.

 

"Because it is not possible to pre-screen this much content, we have developed an innovative and reliable community policy system that involves our users in helping us enforce YouTube's standards. Millions of users report potential violations of our Community Guidelines by selecting the 'Flag' link while watching videos."

 

According to Community Guideline policies, videos "flagged" by users are then reviewed by YouTube, YouTube staff determines whether to take down the flagged videos.

 

 

 

I can see this leading to censorship of more websites along the way if say a bill gets introduced and passed on something of this matter. All though I don't like what they post I am not against it either as long as it does not hurt someone.

 

Read the full story as it is quite large HERE