[Infowarrior] - YouTube refuses Lieberman request

[Richard Forno]

YouTube refuses Lieberman request
Published on May 19, 2008

http://www.fcw.com/online/news/152587-1.html

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs  
Committee today asked Google, the parent company of the popular online  
video-sharing site, YouTube, to “immediately remove content produced  
by Islamist terrorist organizations” from YouTube and prevent similar  
content from reappearing. However, the company immediately refused to  
comply with his request.

Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) made the request in a letter to Eric  
Schmidt, the chairman of the board and chief executive officer at  
Google, in which he said that YouTube “unwittingly, permits Islamist  
terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive and amplified voice  
despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law  
enforcement and intelligence communities.”

Lieberman asked the company not only to remove existing content but  
also  identify changes that Google plans to make to YouTube’s  
community guidelines and explain how it plans to enforce the  
guidelines. Lieberman said removing such content should be “a  
straightforward task since so many of the Islamist terrorist  
organizations brand their material with logos or icons identifying  
their provenance.”

However, YouTube in a response this afternoon, said taking those  
actions was not so simple and refused to remove all videos mentioning  
or featuring these groups without consideration of whether the videos  
were legal, nonviolent or non-hate speech videos.

“While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free  
speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of  
view,” the company said. “We believe that YouTube is a richer and more  
relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range  
of views, and rather than stifle debate, we allow our users to view  
all acceptable content and make up their own minds.”

The statement thanked Lieberman for alerting the company last week of  
several videos which violated the company’s community guidelines and  
that have subsequently been removed. However, the statement said that  
“most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech  
content, were not removed because they do not violate our Community  
Guidelines.”

YouTube’s community guidelines prohibit hate speech and ask users not  
to post videos that show someone getting hurt, attacked or humiliated.  
According to the YouTube Community Guidelines, users can flag videos  
they feel are inappropriate, which may then be removed from the site  
by the company after review.

Lieberman’s letter comes after his committee released a report,  
“Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet and the Homegrown Terrorist  
Threat,” May 8 that said chatrooms, message boards and Web sites can  
play critical roles in recruitment, indoctrination into violent  
Islamist theology, linking radicalized individuals and providing  
information to independent terrorists unaffiliated with organizations.  
The report also said the government needs to develop a plan to counter  
terrorist groups' increasing reliance on the Internet.

However, whatever federal strategy is developed may face scrutiny from  
critics who say the committee’s May 8 report unfairly singled out  
Muslims as possible extremists, in addition to civil libertarians and  
privacy advocates concerned with protecting free speech and Internet  
freedom.

John Morris, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and  
Technology, said  Lieberman’s letter was a practical impossibility  
and  having sites such as YouTube pre-screen content would radically  
change how the Internet is used.

YouTube noted in its statement that hundreds of thousands of videos  
are uploaded to the site daily.

“The government can’t get involved in suppressing videos if the  
content is not illegal,” Morris said, explaining that such a policy  
would likely face stiff opposition from advocates of First Amendment  
rights.