FROM THE LA TIMES
YouTube is letting users decide on terrorism-related videos
The company has been under fire from lawmakers for refusing to prescreen militant speeches and propaganda videos. Now users can mark such uploads for removal.By Brian Bennett, Tribune Washington BureauReporting from Washington — Nudity. Sexual activity. Animal abuse. All are reasons YouTube users can flag a video for removal from the website. Add a new category: promotes terrorism.
YouTube and its parent company, Google, have been criticized by lawmakers for refusing to prescreen militant speeches and propaganda videos that have been cited in more than a dozen terrorism investigations over the last five years.
But rather than submit to policies that many argue would amount to an erosion of 1st Amendment rights, particularly in an open-access environment such as the Internet, YouTube is taking a decidedly more democratic path — let the customers decide.
The approach puts YouTube in the middle of a debate over whether it is possible to protect free speech and deny militants a powerful recruitment tool — slick videos glorifying jihad that reach into the laptops and minds of disaffected young Americans.
After years of calling on YouTube to take down content produced by Islamic extremists, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) called the new flagging protocols a "good first step toward scrubbing mainstream Internet sites of terrorist propaganda."
"But it shouldn't take a letter from Congress — or in the worst possible case, a successful terrorist attack — for YouTube to do the right thing," said Lieberman, whose staff has met with YouTube officials on the issue.
Yet the new category also is "potentially troubling," said George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen, because the phrase "promotes terrorism" is more subject to interpretation than the longstanding language in the YouTube guidelines that specifically forbids material that incites others to commit violence.
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YouTube is letting users decide on terrorism-related videos
The company has been under fire from lawmakers for refusing to prescreen militant speeches and propaganda videos. Now users can mark such uploads for removal.By Brian Bennett, Tribune Washington BureauReporting from Washington — Nudity. Sexual activity. Animal abuse. All are reasons YouTube users can flag a video for removal from the website. Add a new category: promotes terrorism.
YouTube and its parent company, Google, have been criticized by lawmakers for refusing to prescreen militant speeches and propaganda videos that have been cited in more than a dozen terrorism investigations over the last five years.
But rather than submit to policies that many argue would amount to an erosion of 1st Amendment rights, particularly in an open-access environment such as the Internet, YouTube is taking a decidedly more democratic path — let the customers decide.
The approach puts YouTube in the middle of a debate over whether it is possible to protect free speech and deny militants a powerful recruitment tool — slick videos glorifying jihad that reach into the laptops and minds of disaffected young Americans.
After years of calling on YouTube to take down content produced by Islamic extremists, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) called the new flagging protocols a "good first step toward scrubbing mainstream Internet sites of terrorist propaganda."
"But it shouldn't take a letter from Congress — or in the worst possible case, a successful terrorist attack — for YouTube to do the right thing," said Lieberman, whose staff has met with YouTube officials on the issue.
Yet the new category also is "potentially troubling," said George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen, because the phrase "promotes terrorism" is more subject to interpretation than the longstanding language in the YouTube guidelines that specifically forbids material that incites others to commit violence.
READ MORE
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