Tokyo Demands YouTube Play Fair

eldavojohn writes "Recently, the city government of Tokyo has requested that political speeches to be pulled from YouTube, claiming that it gave certain hopefuls an advantage over others for Sunday's election. You may recall YouTube being in trouble with more than a few countries in the past. 'Japanese election law limits the broadcasting of speeches, which are aired only on public broadcaster NHK. Soon after the race kicked off last month, the speech by one fringe candidate, street musician Koichi Toyama, 36, has become a popular attraction on YouTube due to his eccentric, confrontational approach.' Is it fair that some government officials are being viewed more on YouTube than others or is it simply leveling the playing field for anyone with a message since it costs very little to put a video on YouTube?"

Comments

Simple solution

[smooth wombat]

Put all the speeches on YouTube and let the public access them. That way the playing field is level.

After all, it would be a horrible thing if someone in Japan wasn't doing the same thing as everyone else. How shameful!

Re:Simple solution

[fwr]

Each country has their own laws. This may come as a shock to some, but the US can't/shouldn't enforce our laws on other countries. Whether we have the right or duty to "free" other countries under dictatorial rule is another discussion that I won't comment on here. However, when the people of a country vote to have particular rules with regard to advertising or campaign contributions it's not our place to say whether they are right or wrong. Some would even argue that it would be better for the US to have publicly funded election campaigns and ban private contributions, and have equal time on the government licensed broadcast channels. However, there are laws that have go through review all the way to the SCOTUS that say otherwise. Who's to say that the US' laws trump Japan's laws, or which is "better?" I'd say the people in those two countries, and no one else.

Re:Simple solution

[Ironsides]

So should Japan be able to enforce Japanese laws on a country operating out of the US then? Because that is what this is all about.

Re:Simple solution

[JanneM]

Each country has their own laws. This may come as a shock to some, but the US can't/shouldn't enforce our laws on other countries.

But the US isn't, in this case. Instead, it's the Japanese legal authorities that want to impose Japanese law on foreign soil. The turnaround equivalent could for instance the restrictions for paid political speech in the US, which does not stop any foreign blogger or other media talking about the US election, endorsing one candidate over another (without disclosing what agenda they really do and who is paying and so on). Or laws in some countries like Sweden that forbid identifying a crime suspect by name and image before they've actually convicted, but which of course doesn't stop newspapers publishing that info on websites in neighboring countries

I live in Japan and there's a good deal of rules and other things that do make sense here, but the election-related framework is frankly one that no longer does, if it really ever did (candidates are for instance not allowed to actually change the content on their websites once campaigning is started). One way to solve this could be to distinguish push and pull media. Keep restrictions in place for push media like radio, television, magazine ads and so on, media for which it was intended. But allow free use of pull media like websites or Youtube - there the user is actively searching out the info, not getting it stuffed down their throat. The playing field is also more even due to the low cost of setting up and maintaining such a prescence.

No equality on consumption!

[mhall119]

Is it fair that some government officials are being viewed more on YouTube than others or is it simply leveling the playing field for anyone with a message since it costs very little to put a video on YouTube?.

YouTube is not a broadcaster, it doesn't "air" anything. It is a source of goods for consumption. I don't like the idea of governments forcing me to "consume" candidates equally. If I want to watch more videos of one candidate over another, that should be my right.

Broadcast is a content limited resource, which is why those resources are required to be shared evenly among candidates, the internet isn't limited in that way, so forced rationing doesn't make sense. I can't choose what is broadcast on NBC, but I can choose what I watch on YouTube, that's the difference between the two.

I think it's quite interesting

[Dunbal]

YouTube is, basically, the voice of the people. In and of itself, YouTube has no political agenda. It carries video without discrimination. They themselves do not post anything. I think it's interesting to watch how many corporations and governments have "demanded" things, blocked, banned, and legally threatened YouTube. The desire to shut people up when you are criticized or poked fun at is overwhelming. But when will they realize that the internet cannot be silenced? YouTube merely makes sharing such video incredibly easy. However the sentiment (and the sharing) would happen even if it wasn't for this service.

Re:Hummmm.

[draos]

I think it would be easy to apply a U.S. perspective to this and cry foul. But if Japan has publicly funded elections and strict, but fair rules about how candidates communicate then maybe they are justified in their action. It seems to me that a slightly stricter approach to election practices might take away the "guy with the most money wins" mentality that has come to dominate the U.S. process.

Limits of free speech are sometimes justified (you can't cry fire in a theater) and this MAY be one of those occasions. Or not.

Re:Hummmm.

[badasscat]

I think it would be easy to apply a U.S. perspective to this and cry foul. But if Japan has publicly funded elections and strict, but fair rules about how candidates communicate then maybe they are justified in their action.

I agree. The initial reaction among Americans to this news would likely be to cite "free speech" as justification for letting YouTube keep the clips up.

But that's a very Amero-centric way of looking at the world, and is rooted in the same kind of thinking that now has us in trouble in Iraq and is responsible for the dim view taken of us by the rest of the world.

If Japan's laws say speeches can't be broadcast except through government-controlled TV, then I'm sorry, but that's the law. And if Google wants to do business in Japan (as they do), then they need to respect local laws. A US company should not be trying to impose US law or US cultural norms on Japan.

It's perfectly within YouTube's power to geo-restrict these videos to parts of the world where they're allowed. Yes, you can get around those restrictions if you really want to, but there's no reason they shouldn't take reasonable measures to comply with Japanese laws with regard to Japanese videos.

Information wants to be free

[ajs]

At some point (we can only hope it will be soon), folks are going to realize that the phrase, "information wants to be free," is no more a statement of wishful thinking than, "gasses want to expand to fill their contianer." It's an anthropomorphic way of stating something fundamental about the physics of information with respect to large groups of humans.

All attempts to a) disseminate information to large groups and b) control that dissemination will FAIL. They must fail. The energy required to contain information scales very much logarithmically with respect to the size of the group that receives it, and quickly becomes impractical. We're not telling the RIAA, MPAA, Japanese government, and many others that, "your information is something I should be allowed to have." Rather, we're trying to explain that, "your information is going to be knocking at my door several times a week, and if you make it illegal for me to answer my door, it's just going to end up with me going to jail... does that serve a purpose?

Re:Hummmm.

[elioty]

A US company should not be trying to impose US law or US cultural norms on Japan. Impose cultural norms on them? Google/YouTube provides a service that allows users to upload videos. That's it. They're not "imposing" anything.

The way I see it, if this service puts pressure on Japan's legal system they're free to try and stop it. However, the chances of them doing so in the long run is slim. I say buckle up and make some adjustments to the system. The sooner the better.