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YouTube Refuses To Remove Terrorist Videos
hhavensteincw writes "YouTube has declined a request from Sen. Joe Lieberman remove videos from terrorist organizations. Lieberman said that the videos made by groups like Al-Qaeda show assassinations, attacks on US soldiers leading to injuries and death, and weapons training, 'incendiary' speeches, and other material intended to 'encourage violence against the West.' YouTube said that while it removed some of the videos highlighted by the Senator, most were allowed to stay because they did not violate YouTube's community guidelines. YouTube went on to note that they are strong supporters of free speech."
???? 4. Profit?
Let us decide what we can watch. Don't censor anything, please?
but how long till they buckle?
They should have gone a step further and told Lieberman off for being a censorship nazi.
Bullshit, not because they won't remove videos, but because youtube is notorious for removing "offensive" material--whether it's insulting women or even something like bashing religion, presumably because people don't like having their dogmas trampled-- or just plain removing material on rather spurious grounds, and I'm not even talking about removing videos wrongly due to DMCA complaints.
Of course they'll leave up terrorist videos because it'll get them more hits.
Way to go Google. Why is is indecent for a naked human to be shown, but free speech when it comes to videotaped attacks against our soldiers. Please, someone explain this one to me.
A few years ago I used to laugh at news like this coming from the US. But now, I just shake my head. It's not funny anymore.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You can't post a video with two people having consentual sex. Yet you can post videos showing violence, inciting hatred and bragging about terrorist attacks.
:-)
Personally, I think that if we allow terrorist videos, then at the very least pr0n should be allowed, too.
This smells like a stunt. Lieberman was probably expecting them to refuse him entirely, and use that to incite outrage to further his agenda. It looks like Youtube saw through it, and took the responsible course of action by fairly applying their community standards. Now Lieberman will have to openly admit that he wants to limit free speech if he wants to push this further, because he can't claim that they're unfairly supporting one viewpoint by keeping the majority of the content which did not violate the standards.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Well, there are also many videos showing Iraqi's getting mowed down by various US weapons. Bombs, cannons, and so on. What do people who want to remove "terrorist" videos want to do with these?
Google didn't seem to have much support for freedom of speech when they assisted the government of India in locating a man who posted a profane picture of the Hindu saint Shivaji, as reported yesterday on Slashdot. Strong supporters of freedom of speech indeed - right up until the protection of a user's right to freedom of speech threatens to strain Google's political relationships with distant countries where labor and data center construction are cheap.
Free speech is always important, but we always have limits. In a time of war, when we're asking young men and women to risk their right to life, is it too much to ask that we take away the free speech of people who are encouraging the killing of not only those men and women, but of ourselves and our friends?
Can't Youtube voluntarily add something to their guidelines like "Don't post stuff that supports terrorism or undermines the national security of the country where Youtube is located? The global economy is nice, but they're still Americans and those soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are still dying for them, and the Youtube owners are still as much targets of the terrorists as the people in the Twin Towers and the United airplanes were.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
> Hypocritical?
> They seem to have no problem removing videos related to Scientology.
That's not hypocritical - that's not wanting to be sued for infringement of other people's intellectual property.
I found the insurgent videos to be, well lacking in their musical choice. However, they provided an excellent view into the operations of the insurgents. We sometimes would watch them just to get a better idea about them.
And the Uhm Kfar (spelling?) video did have some hella tight beats.
You know...once this whole world-struggle for ideologies (this really isn't about Iraq, as far as the insurgents see it) is over, we are gonna sit down, have some beers, and play our videos together, and laugh about the old times.
They are going to post their videos on some site... we certainly post ours. Why shouldn't a US company get the ad revenue?
THL phish sticks
A record of an event is not the illegal event -- why don't you ban the fucking news while you're at it?
> Can I kill my annoying neighbors now and claim free speech protection?
Not unless you're a rich Saudi, in which case Bush will be pleased to assist.
- however the battle between the USA and its allies and Wahhabist / fundamentalist islamic terrorists and their allies is essentially a political battle by other means.
No side in this war can hope to eradicate the other side.. I am British, 20 years ago I was 50 metres away from being dismembered by an IRA bomb in a london street. Now - thanks to courageous politicians - we live in peace with the Northern irish and the former leaders of terrorist organisations co-operate to run Ulster jointly
A peaceful outcome btween Wahhabism and neo-conservatism requires what we had here - both sides being willing to allow the other to speak. the American tendency to try to drown out the voice of the (few) legitimate grievances of al-qaeda pushes the day the middle east is at peace further and further away
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
No, but I can certainly call you a moron for doing it, and even mock you for it. I could even shoot a recreation of the events and mock you. Or I could also post the actual video and call it news.
PS. I think you missed a few memos.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Wow. I guess slashdotters don't appreciate sarcasm today. Let's see if I can be more straightforward:
By hosting videos from terrorist organizations, YouTube could be construed as providing communication for terrorists, which constitutes material support for terrorists. In some previous cases of alleged material support for terrorism, the government has acted aggressively (example). Of course this case will be handled differently, because Google is a well known organization commonly in the public eye, but I suspect the US would be much more aggressive about this "request" if it were a lesser known company. I think applying the law evenly to all potential offenders would expose the problems with current laws.
Since Teh YouTube is owned by Teh Googel, they have probably already provided the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the posters to the LIEberman's conservative buddies in the Schutzstaffel.
Google's "dunt be teh evel" only goes as far as PR and bumper stickers. There are a lot of people in political prisons, or dead, because of Google.
Hell, every single time the US apparatus kills a non-merkun, that is animosity generated SOMEwhere, and it puts a fucking bulls eye on MY back. Going to wrong place, or just having visible a US passport not only increases the risk of being accosted, grabbed, or killed (not to mention having prices jacked up at the sound of my voice or sight of my gait or clothing or body language) makes me a target, NOT solely because of the passport but for being called a 'merkun.
A life is a life, at the individual level. It's only different for those who have bigger guns, pussies for a population, and laws to jail or contain those who speak out.
LET ME DECIDE what I'll watch. So far, to my recollection, i have YET to bother watching the beheading of any nationality. Not out of respect for the dead, but just because of personal preference to not make it a thing to do or repeat.
If the USA doesn't want to see 'merkuns coming home in body bags nor be executed/murdered/butchered, then all it has to do is stop bombing, stop killing, and stop strong-arming and stop acting as if people who have grievances against the US don't have to right to get some rep. The more repugnant the public finds the ACT of murder (as opposed to recoiling over the mere existence of a video that depicts the murder) then maybe the more backbone the 'merkun people will grow out of concern for it's IMAGE.
Right now, we do NOT deserve that much respect. Plain fuckin' period. Trinkets, bravado, money, power, guns, steel, rockets, and freedom for me don't mean SHIT when some asshole decides to kill in my name, steal in my name, plunder in my name, and risk my well being to keep goods rolling and oil flowing when MOST of the bullshit is something i OUGHT not be buying in the first place, or certainly could buy less of it.
There. I speak for myself, even if others agree. Sometimes, I'll assert my opinion has a moral priority over others', and with or without agreement, i will stand my ground. Don't FUCKING KILL in MY name and expect me to ignore it or forgive it or play like every single one of the attacked was wrong or was a threat to ME or even "the system". Otherwise, the populace deserves to be wiped out by plague, pestilence, famine, nature, or even any pot-shot-taking ETs that happen to notice our repugnant leaders and, worse, our general total ineffectiveness to reign in the corrupt.
Congress and the Senate need to remember that when you tell someone NOT to see a movie, they go see it. Assigning an R-Rating to a movie or film just increases viewership. Leaving it UNRATED might do even more to increase viewership.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
perhaps the removed videos were the ones with beheadings and the ones that are still there are the ones with i dunno terrorist training camps & osama bin laden speeches & other Anti-American propaganda.
I think the ones with the beheadings and stonings and abuse of women are the most important to keep. They show the true face of Militant Islam and Sharia Law. It's easy to make a convincing Anti-American propaganda video, we make lots of mistakes and some of them are quite shameful (Gitmo and Katrina come to mind) but let not forget to closely examine what our critics are proposing to replace our imperfect America with.
Someone needs to pull Lieberman aside explain to him meaning of "the only thing you have to fear is fear itself." Fight lies and propaganda with truth and transparency, not secrets and censorship.
We are all just people.
If I owned a multinational enterprise and as such, am bound by the laws of the country I do business in, I would definitly behave differently from country to country. If I don't like the country's privacy laws (or lack thereof) its my choice to stop doing business there. It isn't my right to break their laws based on my own egocentric view of the world.
I don't know the case that happened in India, but if the indian police issued a -legal- subpoena for the offender's identifying information, I wouldn't break their laws since it would probably mean:
1. huge fines
2. complete bar from doing business in the country
Bye!
Free speech is fine: the GOVERNMENT/STATE should never forbid speech of any kind (with the reasonable restriction on things like child pornography et cetera.)
A private organization saying hey we won't allow mass murders to post propaganda on our site is not the same. I am willing to bet YouTube would feel different if the US Gov't posted overt propaganda videos on YouTube.
Derek Greene
Yet the US continues to harbour Luis Posada Carriles, who is suspect of bombing a Cuban airliner. Venezuela has been trying to get him extradited for years, but the US refuses. The last time a country refused to hand over suspected terrorists, it was invaded as a result. That country was of course, Afghanistan.
YouTube also has an odd habit or removing videos posted by conservatives or atheists which criticize Islam. How does the DMCA relate to that? Perhaps Allah filed a complaint with them for quoted his book?
Ah, mirroring the story, the moderators, too, want to suppress opinions or statements that differ from their own personal views.
You're wrong, and Lieberman is wrong. These terrorists are evil, but it is stupid to try to silence them. Americans need to know about them and their message in order to make informed decisions as citizens.
Lieberman is wrong.
One cite a habit does not make.
It's all pretty damned scary from looking in from outside the bubble.
Seriously, "our" brand of fanaticism is no worse, no better, than "theirs" -- "their" PR departments just don't have control of the media like "ours". (Note that inside "their" bubble, it's the exact reverse -- that's why you don't hear about Al Sadir or whatever his name is being run out of town.)
"They" decry the "great Satan" and leave pipe bombs near roads, "we" hide pipe bombs in Abortion Clinics' parking lots and post the home addresses and pictures of doctor's children.
No difference, except for the level of desperation.
I put that in quotes because as many people seem to forget, America is a secular nation. That means that Islam is as much a part of the US as Christianity, Wicca, Buddhism, and countless other beliefs -- all equally valid and equally worthy of our respect and protection.
I am deeply disturbed that the US government is censoring information. This shows that the US government is now operating in total defiance of the US constitution and of human rights, along with the fact it is now engaging in torture of prisoners and indefinite detainments without trail and charges and so on. No government should be allowed to censor information or violate human rights in other ways. We should not allow a government to decide what people can and cant look at. Once we allow this, there is little stop this from getting more and more unreasonable. One minute it could be terrorist videos, another minute it could be videos say uncovering toxic pollution of the environment by a company (this, according to the increasingly vague definition of terrorism, I am sure could eventually be called a terrorist act because it threatens corporate profits and tries to alert the public so they will demand the government stop the pollution).
Free speech is a very important right and why the drafters of the US constitution did not include any provision for it to be suspended. This is because it is difficult to define what is bad law or a good law in a constitution. The founders understood that if there are unjust laws in the books, that with free speech the people have an opportunity to help abolish bad laws. Its obviously a bad law to place a $500 fine on jaywalking but difficult to draft a constitution that is able to explicitely prohibit all kinds of such bad legislation.
Governments role is not to decide what we are allowed to look at and to control speech. We see the government increasingly doing things it has no business doing, such as invading our privacy and censorship, and engaging in illegal wars, and doing less of what it should be doing and that is helping people who are in need through health care, affordable housing, employment and unemployement insurance, and so on. We need to demand government stop the censorship, the torture, the surveillance to create a prison state to enslave people and start serving the people again and truly protecting peoples freedom, which does not mean censorship torture, and in other ways taking away peoples freedoms and so on.
Microsoft fought the gov't and won.
They "lost" but didn't even get a slap on the wrist.
They are getting away with OOXML and other proprietary standards, and IE is still the default browser and can't be removed, and Netscape is still dead.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
So, sorry to burst your bubble, but if a jihadist publishes a video through YouTube, that video has First Amendment protections, by virtue of the fact that YouTube is owned by Google (a U.S. company operating in the United States) and by virtue of the place where the material is "published" -- regardless of where the author might reside. So YouTube can't be legally compelled to censor said video.
Freedom of Speech applies universally in the United States, not just to speech that you agree with, and not just to people you happen to like. That's why you can run out and buy a copy of Mein Kampf in this country, and why we have a Nazi party here when the same political party is outlawed in Germany. If the First Amendment only applied to citizens, the effect on any kind of diplomatic or political discourse would be chilling to say the least... not to mention the effect on the cultural contributions of foreign authors. Picture an America devoid of Harry Potter because some religious nutbag in the government decided that J.K. Rowling was promoting witchcraft.
Free Speech does not protect inciting violence any more than it protects yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Sorry, that's just the way it is.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Take a look at a map. Find Israel. Nice, small country, eh? Then find Gaza and west-bank on the map.. and then stop to think for a few seconds. Put aside your feelings, old thoughts on who did what to who when and why, push the horror-stories away.. and just stop to consider the underlying basics in this conflict...
In other words, apartheid. It's that simple. The current situation is completely amoral and completely unacceptable. Israel should either work on incorporating the occupied terrorities into their own state, or work on getting the hell out.. and I'm absolutely flabbergasted we're actually trading with them. They should have been trade-boycotted to hell and back a long time ago.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
First, Europeans aren't having enough kids. Their populations will decline unless Muslim immigrants and their descendants fill the gap.
What you will see, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned it, will be sharia laws in European countries. First for the Muslims. Hopefully, it won't branch out from there. Now, I know people were critical of those remarks. But today's unthinkable becomes tomorrow's thinkable.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"but they'll refuse to remove videos of terrorists killing other people."
:( In fact beyond double standards you are proud of U.S. taxpayer sponsored U.S. military terror bombings.
If you "conservatives" were equally indignant about the state terror of U.S. bombs dropped on innocent civilians living in apartments or shot at checkpoints in Iraq I'd believe, you, alas you're not you have double standards.
And BTW I walk the talk and sayno to censoring either Islamic or U.S. state sponsored military terror.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
...YouTube was owned by Google, not the State.
You have all the free speech you can get---on your own dime. YouTube is a business, not a public service. They have a right as a private organization, and a responsibility to their shareholders, to determine what stays and what goes, based on what they think will make the most money, plain and simple.
It so happens that free speech is very marketable. If "Web2.0" means anything, it's that one fact. But they have a vision of what they want their site to be like, and a legal responsibility to do basic due diligence in response to copyright violations. The video poster's 1st Amendment rights have nothing to do with this case. You wanna post videos of beheadings on the internet? Fine, go get a domain name and a web server, and you can do just that. I'll bet you wouldn't be the first. (If you can imagine it, there's porn of it.)
If Joe Lieberman or Mrs. Grundy or Jesus Christ says "Remove this," it's up to YouTube's staff to decide whether or not to honor that request.
This isn't about censorship. Let's say I own a building, and I tell you you can draw whatever you want on it, with the stipulation that I'll remove anything that I decide is "bad". Then you draw a person getting their head asploded, and someone says to me, "Hey, Isaac, that drawing is pretty bad." It's my call whether to take it down or not.
The minute the State starts saying that YouTube MUST remove content, then we're all in trouble. But you'd better believe YouTube would cry First Amendment on that one right away, and they'll be right.
Isaac Z. Schlueter
http://foohack.com
I disagree. I've always thought that half the fun in sarcasm is that half the people won't get it, and you get to laugh at their stupidity.
A mild side effect is that you have no confidence in humanity, but hey, at least you got a laugh out of it.
They're not folding fairly.
Google are happy to remove anti-Islam videos, anti-Scientology videos and so forth yet Islamic Extremists and Scientologists are free to post all the propaganda they want.
Google are simply citing free speech when it suits them to further whatever bias they have at the time whilst happily going against free speech and censoring plenty of other things that are far less offensive.
Someone making fun of Scientology, or someone calling Islam evil is treated as being far more evil than videos showing civilians getting shot or maimed yet Google's censorship program goes against this reality.
Presumably in the states with Scientology at least it's because they're scared of being sued by them, well, perhaps it's time the parents of a soldier shot dead in one of these videos also sues them so that they can make their decision based on fear of legal reprisal rather than common sense as it's the only thing that seems to be able to balance their censorship.
Of course I'd rather see the zero censorship option, but Google have already long gone against the idea of that so let's at least have balanced, unbiased censorship shall we?
If YouTube cannot or will not edit the videos to remove segments of the speeches where specific threats are made then they probably should remove the videos as the Senator suggested.
But that is the general point of the said videos. When they say "Death to America!" they mean it and say it throughout the whole video which would make it pointless to remove sections of it since it would be the majority of it. Its their message!
My consideration is that if you fear their message so much that you must censor it then they have already won. Secondly, it is ever US Citizens rights to know that people elsewhere are threatening them with death. Now I believe the terrorist threat is exaggerated at this point, but if you pull the wool over the public eyes it only hurts the victim and possibly helps the terrorists.
9/11 was able to happen because those airline passengers didn't know who Al Queda was or the geopolitical situation in the middle east. If the public had situational awareness that something like this was possible then their might have been a different outcome on that day.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
To approach this honestly you have to consider the source of the complaint. Lieberman is hardly worried about Al Qaeda videos. Lieberman is heavily backed by AIPAC (the right wing Israeli lobby group) and the most extreme right wing elements in the Israeli government. He's the closest thing to an Israeli seat in the U.S. Congress. His real concern is that Israel is afraid of having their illegal and immoral actions in Gaza and the West Bank exposed. Many reporters are afraid of entering Gaza fearing that they too will be slaughtered by an Israeli tank group. However, these actions haven't stopped YouTube uploads of camera phone videos, like the targeting of a reporter last month. That's what really worries Lieberman's backers. The U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council has prevented Israel from international retribution. But the country still fears the consequences that may result from further videos of their illegal and immoral actions becoming public. And that is what Lieberman's efforts are really all about.