Slashdot Mirror
UK Pressures the US To Takedown Extremist Videos
chrb writes "BBC News and the Telegraph are reporting that the British government has pressured the US government to take down privately hosted extremist web sites and videos, particularly on YouTube. The request follows the conviction of a 21-year-old woman who attempted to murder MP Stephen Timms after watching YouTube videos of radical American Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. YouTube hosts more than 5,000 videos featuring al-Awlaki, but has begun to remove them following the British government's complaints. The issue obviously raises First Amendment issues in the US, but Security minister Baroness Neville-Jones has said 'Those websites would categorically not be allowed in the UK. They incite cold-blooded murder and as such are surely contrary to the public good. If they were hosted in the UK then we would take them down but this is a global problem. Many of these websites are hosted in America and we look forward to working even more closely with you to take down this hateful material.'"
Can someone show me a specific example of where he incites violence in his videos?
There's this little thing called treason and it is defined in the constitution as follows: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Alwaki's videos most definitely fit this description and are thus treasonous speech. Treasonous speech is not protected by the constitution. I find it pathetic that any American would support treason against their own country. No wonder the terrorists think they can win.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
The Glen Beck show has been shown to incite mass murder plots. If Google is going to be "forced" to remove these videos, then they should have to remove all Glen Beck videos too.
Frankly, the request from the British government, both to YouTube (and other companies) and to the US Government is all three: reasonable , legal, and likely to happen.
Reasonable in that these videos (and, yes, I went out and looked at a couple, I'm not going to say where), have no redeeming social value. They're strictly (a) war propaganda (b) pure hate speech and (c) active statements of intent to commit violence. None of these characteristics provided any value to our societal discussion of ideas (which is what the 1st Amendment enshrines, but does not define). No one in either the US or the UK needs to see these for any reason other than military intelligence (which, we can get without allowing them to be made for public consumption).
Legal in that according to both UK and US law, these videos fit within the various exceptions to protected speech (that is, they fit into well-defined categories of speech NOT afforded protection). Thus, it's entirely likely that the UK request to the US government will see some sort of follow-through by the US Executive branch, as the content of the videos isn't reasonably up for discussion as to the legality thereof - it's not like they have to be parsed for obscene vs offensive categorization, and I don't see any court ruling in favor of these videos being protected speech (here in the US). It's actually a pretty cut-and-dried case of Incitement to Violence.
Likely as both the above cases point out, it's pretty much a no-brainer request to the US, as it doesn't run afoul of any of our laws, or even likely to produce a court case. In addition, for private providers, its very clear that they violate pretty much any T-O-S I've ever seen for posting public video or images.
Free Speech is great, but there are well-defined (for very good reasons) exceptions to protection, and this stuff very clearly fits inside those exceptions.
But, I do expect the various TLA agencies to continue to listen to al-Awalki - after all, he's giving them plenty of rope to hang himself by.
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Am I misreading something? The article says that YouTube has policies to take various videos down, and says that "the British government has pressured the US government to take down privately hosted extremist web sites and videos", but it doesn't actually say that anything has been successfully taken down due to pressure from or legal actions by the US government.
No, really, it's all politics, not religion.
I approve of removing that trash from YouTube.
One led to the other. His power of oratory whipped up the anti-semitic feeling that made the holocaust possible.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
That's right, most of the horrors of WWII was due to atheist principles.
"There is no god, therefore we must kill people"?
"This is how the different species came about, therefore we must kill people"?
the atheist argument of evolution
[Not believing in the existence of a god] and [believing in what your senses tell you] and [believing only in what your senses tell you] are three distinct things. They tend to overlap in people, but they are different.
Hitler may have conflated them for rhetorical purposes. I don't know, I don't have the primary sources at hand.
Also, based on my understanding, evolution is (and at the time was) a descriptive theory---it tries to explain how the world works and why (in some sense) we observe what we observe. It is not a suggestion of policy, it doesn't say "you should do [something]".
Compare with economics: the basic theory of microeconomics assume the existence of positive-sum games (i.e. win-win trades) and informed trading agents, and comes to the conclusion that if markets are free, the sum of all wealth will be maximal. This is a descriptive claim, "if you do A then B happens". There's a related policy claim, "B should happen" (i.e. wealth should be maximized) which people can have an honest disagreement about, but it's somehow different from the factual claim.
I hope this helps someone put parent into perspective.