Egyptian Blogger Silenced by YouTube, Yahoo!

An anonymous reader writes "An Egyptian human rights activist has been muzzled after YouTube and Yahoo! shut down his accounts. Award-winning blogger Wael Abbas regularly writes and posts video about police brutality, torture and sexual harassment in Egypt. One of the videos — of an Egyptian bus driver being brutalized by an officer — was used as evidence to convict two members of the police force. That's a rare occurrence in a country where human-rights groups say torture is rampant. YouTube said the decision to remove Abbas' videos had nothing to do with the Egyptian government, but was rather an internal decision."

Comments

internal decision

[pipatron]

YouTube said the decision to remove Abbas' videos had nothing to do with the Egyptian government, but was rather an internal decision.

Uhm... internal decision? So they mean that they didn't bother to even wait for the government to order them to remove it? And this is supposed to make them look better or what?

Re:Silenced? Censorship?

[A beautiful mind]

There is an adult content flag for certain videos on Youtube for a reason. That is more than ample to protect users from unwanted contect. Besides, if someone finds one of his videos I doubt they did so by searching for cute pink daisies. They are owned by Google, after all.

Re:It's too bad YouTube and Yahoo are the only opt

[pipatron]

Yeah, we know. And if McDonald's don't want to serve a black person they don't have to, and you can take your business elsewhere. Isn't the free market wonderful!

Re:Silenced? Censorship?

[redscare2k4]

If you RTFA, there's expressed what I think is a very valid point. If youtube forbids vids containing graphical violence, then why aren't all those people uploading videos of people getting tasered by police officers (for example) getting their accounts banned. IMHO It's not a matter of "Terms of Service". It's a matter of a company choosing to apply those Terms with a double standard. A double standard that get's a the account of a guy who uses youtube to denounce torture banned. And that is wrong both ethically and legally.

Re:Silenced? Censorship?

[morgan_greywolf]

This guy hasn't been silenced, he's been kicked off particular services. He is free to use other services, isn't he? While I would normally tend to agree with you, it doesn't sound like that's the case this time. YouTube hosts plenty of content like this one, including police brutality videos from the United States and other foreign countries. They've hosted some very graphic content, including the hanging of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. These videos have an 'adult content' flag on them, and won't be shone to visitors that have Google's SafeSearch turned on (this is the default, I believe).

Re:Internal decision...

[plague3106]

In this case though, they should allow them because the graphic nature serves a greater purpose to humanity. In other words, if their policy is hiding a truth that people need to know, they should not apply their policy in that case.

Re:Internal decision...

[j.sanchez1]

In this case though, they should allow them because the graphic nature serves a greater purpose to humanity. In other words, if their policy is hiding a truth that people need to know, they should not apply their policy in that case.

Don't you think that opens up a bigger can of worms? Applying TOS to some things, and not others, regardless of truth or intent or anything else that is intangible like that seems to me to be dangerous. Apply the TOS across the board, or change the TOS. That should be the only 2 choices.

Actually, it is Censorship

[Morosoph]

Let's not dilute and weaken the term "censorship" please. It is a despicable act and Google and Yahoo choosing not to provide service to him is not even close.

If a book is censored in England, but can be read in France, it is still censored. The object of censorship is to reduce the circulation of certain material, and that is exactly what has happenned here. Yes, censorship is policy, but are you seriously suggesting that people's right not to be offended outweighs the documentation of human rights abuses? Putting these abuses up on another site means that only people who already know about such abuse will find out about it.

Private entities have the right to censor, but it remains censorship. States also have the right to censor; it doesn't stop the act from being censorship when it occurs. Nor does it prevent the act from being wrong.

Re:It's too bad YouTube and Yahoo are the only opt

[mdwh2]

Discrimination on the basis of race (and some other traits) is illegal in the US. All other, unprotected, kinds of discriminations are legal, although the list of the protected ones is growing.

Who claimed that anything was illegal? Are we only allowed to complain about illegal things, and not allowed to discuss the ethics of legal actions?

Re:Not really

[Asic Eng]

They're entitled to protect their advertising income by enforcing their TOS so they don't get advertisers dropping them because they don't want their corporate image sullied with violent images or whatever.

And we are entitled to complain about it - we are entitled to publically state that what they are doing is immoral - we are entitled to think much less of the companies involved - we are entitled to ask them for an explanation - we are entitled to use other services.

What you appear to suggest is "don't complain, just use someone else". You seem to think that complaining has no effect. That's not true, though - clever companies listen to complaints even before the users abandon their services. They change their behaviour not only when it's already costing them money, but also when it appears likely that it might do so. Apart from that - raising the issue gets other people interested, and that puts even more pressure on the company involved.

Voicing our opinions is one of our fundamental rights. Exercising this right may occasionally have negative consequences for companies doing immoral things. Tough cookies if their shareholders don't like it.