Google Reveals "Terrorism Video" Removals 194
jones_supa writes "Google has revealed it removed about 640 videos from YouTube that allegedly promoted terrorism over the second half of 2011 after complaints from the UK's Association of Chief Police Officers. The news was contained in its latest Transparency Report which discloses requests by international authorities to remove or hand over material. YouTube had also rejected many other state's requests for action. Overall, Google summed it had received 461 court orders covering a total of 6,989 items between July and December 2011. From those, it said 68% of the orders were complied with. Google added that it had received a further 546 informal requests covering 4,925 items, of which it had agreed to 43% of the cases."
Censorship, much? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Google also censored the 16-year-old girl who was reading from her Bible the passages that forbid gay marriage. (They claimed reading a text that has been revered by billions of humans beings over 6000 years is "hate speech".) Sometimes they are a little heavy-handed with their removals. Meanwhile they left the videos calling her a "cunt" and threatening to murder her as okay.
Re:Censorship, much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate speech doesn't stop being hate speech because someone writes it down. It also doesn't stop being hate speech because a whole lot of people agree with it. The Bible is less than 500 years old. If people did not submit the other videos for removal, then it's not a judgment call on Google's part.
I have no idea how your post got modded insightful.
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On the other hand, saying that there is no such thing as same sex marriage is not hate speech. Saying that you should kill gay people who marry would be.
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>>>Hate speech doesn't stop being hate speech because someone writes it down. It also doesn't stop being hate speech because a whole lot of people agree with it. The Bible is less than 500 years old.
>>>
I stopped reading here. The various books Christian Bible was consolidated around 300 A.D. making if FAR older than a mere five hundred years!!! (How could you be so dumb???)
>>>I have no idea how your post got modded insightful.
Ditto! "500 years." That is in no way insightful. T
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>>>>>Meanwhile they left the videos calling her a "cunt" and threatening to murder her as okay.
>>
>>Of course they weren't, but to play devil's advocate: IF you believe that your sky daddy will give ETERNAL LIFE --- I don't get what the problem is.
Not sure who you're talking to?
I'm an agnostic.
Nice try though; maybe you shouldn't jump to false assumptions about people.
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Re:Censorship, much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Censorship, much? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry to break this to you, they don't hate you for your freedom
So, if they don't hate us for our freedoms (I'm with you on this point - that's the whitewashed, political reason), what do they hate us for? Is it our economic policies? Our military strategies? What is it?
Because I'm at a total loss, and I can't get any real information about this in the states. Why did the Islamist extreme folks start wanting us dead? Who kicked that off, and what the hell is it all about?
Re:Censorship, much? (Score:5, Informative)
Because of our involvement and activism in the middle east. We have steadfastly supported Israel since its creation, we invaded Iraq and toppled its government, we have participated in the overthrow of Iran's government, etc etc. We've messed with and in many cases toppled with the national governments in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and others.
We've been dicking around in their business for 70 years. It's easy for the US to send some troops and equipment over and have a massive influence by installing dictators, killing people, etc. - all while pretending it's perfectly acceptable. They don't have the resources to do that, so we get car bombs.
Re:Censorship, much? (Score:4, Insightful)
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>>Bull crap. Thomas Jefferson was a president who had to handle Muslim piracy with warships, which escalated into the First Barbary War. The Europeans didn't have any stake in the middle east when the Moors invaded Europe, which created the sentiment of containment that sparked the crusades.
>>>
I fail to see how events of 200 or 800 years ago have any relevance to present events. The young men who join terrorist armies are not fighting because of some ancient war. They are fighting because o
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Those who refuse to learn from history are condemmed to repeat it.
Just because people in your age group feel that events 200 years ago have no meaning to them does not mean other cultures feel the same way. In part, Jews have a worldwide problem because many Christian people hold a grudge against something 2000 years ago. Conflicts today in many cases rooted in conflicts many years ago. Irish and Scottish independence is rooted in events more than 600 years ago and the brutality that was inflicted upon t
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>>>Just because people in your age group feel that events 200 years ago have no meaning to them does not mean other cultures feel the same way.
Our soldiers have been showing photos of the WTC attacks to the locals. So far they've found NO locals that even knew what the building represented, or that there was an attack. These people have next-to-zero education, and only care about the present, and their own little world. They SEE the Americans are killing their neighbors but have no idea why.....
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You must be talking about some really backwater locals. I have never seen an Iraq city that didn't have internet cafes and tv. My experience is limited to Iraq and Kuwait but i didn't find them to be stupid. Some were uneducated but that doesn't equate to them being simple. A good comparison would be American "country folk" who get a bad rep from "City people". They are typically viewed as backward (from popular view), but surely not stupid.
If you really want to get into who is killing who.. it's Arabs
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The formation of Israel may have been a mistake, but it was a mistake that was designed in the aftermath of WW II
FTFY
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Re:Censorship, much? (Score:5, Insightful)
US monetary and political support for Israel dwarfs all other countries combined. You follow up your argument that saying they hate us because we aren't them. So why don't they focus their attention on Switzerland? The Vatican? Canada?
We are the big fish in transgressions against their will. Whether their will should be tolerated or not is another story, but the transgressions are the cause, not just because we are free or we simply exist.
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When you're the biggest kid on the block (the U.S) you'll get the most fights. Besides.... there are plenty of Canadians who feel threatened. http://www.opencanada.org/features/the-think-tank/just-how-threatening-is-the-terrorist-threat/ [opencanada.org]
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The concept of warmongering Islamic fundamentalism, and the associated terrorist activity, predates the creation if the state of Israel, not to mention invasion of Iraq etc. Sayyid Qutb wrote the works that outline most ideas [wikipedia.org] guiding al-Qaeda and the likes today back in late 40s to early 50s, and was preaching them even before that.
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I guess I didn't realize that Al Qeada was the official world terrorist group and that terrorism began with them. I also didn't realize that their sole continued reason for existence is US presence in Saudi Arabia.
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Any person with access to a (public) library, newspapers, news magazines or the internet can find many more reasons.
A discussion about the validity of these claims is often difficult but in any case lost on those guys.
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>>>what do they hate us for?
Because we keep killing Arabs. We've been killing Arabs ever since we first attacked Iran in the 1950s and overthrew their democratic government (replacing it with a dictatorial government). More recently we starved a million Iraqi children by blocking food shipments into their country (90s) and directly killed or maimed another 2 million during Bush's Iraq War. Then we bombed Yemen and bombed Libya, killing about 50,000, and permanently disabling another 200,000 with
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Re:Censorship, much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of why they might say they 'hate' the US (infidels, meddling, etc.) the real reason is, at the end of the day, not a whole lot different from why the US 'hates' the terrorists: They want an enemy.
They have a lot of social and political problems, and because they cannot fix them (and really, do not want to because that would require advocating their control) they create a war. It lets the leaders accumulate more power while giving the people someone to blame for their problems other than their leaders.
Why the US? As the 'most powerful' country it's easy to come up with reasons (and not necessarily inaccurate ones!) that it could have negatively impacted people (e.g. selling arms to Israel, trade stuff, cultural influence, etc). That also means that you are expected to lose your war, which is nice because it means you don't really have to try that hard because you can also blame your failings on them being too powerful. This gives a bonus of making you then underdog and any small victory huge. The are also a few other things like being non-islamic and well known and all that.
(As you'll note, the basic ideas here are what makes terrorists, in turn, a great enemy for the US: far away, impossible to actually defeat, and different(==bad).)
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Why the US?
Because the US is the biggest meddler in the region, plain and simple.
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You should watch the outstanding documentary "Taliban: Behind the Masks" It won't give you a full answer to your question, but perhaps a partial one. Ignorance plays a crucial role.
Nowadays, with all the media and the Net, people often forget how different life can be in remote places. Then again, from what I remember of the documentary, the taliban themselves do not seem to be so different from us even if they have a wholly different frame of mind.
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People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome.
(Young) River Tam, Serenity [imdb.com]
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"....what do they hate us for?"
This is why it's important to have free and open communication. We can listen to Bush say "they hate us for our freedom", when we should be getting the word from their point of view.
Various Al Queda figures have said repeatedly that their main grievances are U.S. military occupation of their holy land and unconditional U.S. support for Israel.
With regard to Iran, the U.S. CIA conducted a coup to overthrow Mohamad Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran,
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So, if they don't hate us for our freedoms (I'm with you on this point - that's the whitewashed, political reason), what do they hate us for? Is it our economic policies? Our military strategies?
The biggest reason they hate us right now, according to surveys and writings from people in the region, is that US drones are rountinely blowing up civilians with no involvement in terrorism. In addition, if you show up at the funeral of a person killed in a drone strike, you're now on the suspect list. I mean, imagine you're a typical Yemeni man who goes to work, does some shopping, heads home to your family, and finds that instead of a home and your wife and kids, you have a pile of rubble and a bunch of
Re:Censorship, much? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sayyid Qutb [wikipedia.org] was an important proponent of this way of thinking, and had a lot of influence in the formation of Al Qaeda. Some people [wsj.com] suggest cultural immorality [wsj.com] is more important to global jihadism than what the US did in Iran 50 years ago (remember Iran is not Arab anyway), but who knows if they are right. Certainly American 'immorality' is an important aspect.
The way I see it for Bin Laden, he was a rich powerful guy, wanted to get into politics (ambitious people often do), but the only way to do that in Saudi Arabia where he lived was to have a revolution. There was absolutely no way to have a revolution with the US supporting the Saudi government. So the obvious first step is to remove the US from the situation. The simple way to do it is to hit Americans hard somewhere, then they run. Americans don't stick around, they run, just like after the Beirut hotel bombings. After America was gone, it would leave Bin Laden free to start a revolution, and it would also make him look very powerful. Middle Easterners are drawn to power, much like in the European middle ages (or really for most of history).
Because lets be honest, with all the mistakes and problems the US has caused in the Middle East, we are still much nicer and better than their own dictators.
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The important thing to understand is that there is a difference between motives of individual people in the Islamic terrorist movement, and the driving ideology of that movement as a whole. Most certainly, there are many muji's that are there because their country was attacked etc. And it's quite possible that bin Laden got involved originally because of US support of the ruling Saudi regime. But once they become part of the movement, their concerted action is driven by ideology of that movement - and that
Re:Censorship, much? (Score:4, Informative)
They hate you for coming from your fat rich economy and telling them what to do, and forcing them to sell their oil cheaply, btw.
Bull-fucking-shit. You know who largely sets oil prices worldwide? OPEC [wikipedia.org] (in a manner that would be completely illegal in most of the Western world for price collusion, BTW). Do you know why the US meddles so often? Because OPEC and the Arab world in general hold so tight a fist on oil production, and have shown their willingness to strangle the rest of the world if they don't get their way. The US didn't invade Iraq the first time because it wanted to: no, it did so because Saudi Arabia asked the US to. Gave us a pretty big check to help out, too. The whole region is massively fucked up, has been for literally millennia. The US hasn't always helped, but they also haven't been the ones to start it either.
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Few, if any governments in the Arab world govern by the consent of the governed. What the Saudi Arabian royalty wants is not reflective of what the bulk of the Saudi population want. Just like the policies of Mubarak were not reflective of what the people of Egypt want.
I'm sure their hatred has nothing to do with our military intervention, installation and support for puppet dictatorships, blind support for a military aggressor state in the middle of their region, crippling economic sanctions aimed at coe
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>>>Do you know why the US meddles so often? Because OPEC and the Arab world in general hold so tight a fist on oil
The U.S. has been meddling in Arabia since the 1920s..... long before OPEC existed or we were dependent on them (we had our own abundant oil supplies in Ohio and Texas).
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I can tell you without a doubt that nowhere in the Quran, it says that the 'infidels' (people with other religious or atheist views) should be killed.
The corresponding Koranic verse is so well known that it even has a special name for it - it's very aptly called the Sword Verse [wikipedia.org].
The precise interpretation of this verse vary from school to school, but Salafi in particular seem to be taking it quite literally.
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Understanding your government's enemies, even if you disagree with them, is dangerous to your government. If you do not believe what your government tells you, you might not support them anymore. The videos are dangerous to some, but that is okay.
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Hate Speech? - Let the world see what a douchebag looks like for real.
CP? - The damage is already done.. find the bastard who did it, and do bad things to them, but taking the sick depraved things off the net does not do anything to stop it happening in the first place.
I fully believe that people _need_ to see the horrors of what other people are doing, so that they have a sense of perspective.
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Now I understand if it is regarding material on how to construct IEDs or similar things.
This, also, is protected speech under the first amendment. Even some questionable material should remain available. Picking and choosing what is acceptable and what is not is the first step on a slippery slope to tyranny and dictatorship.
Now if someone is doing something illegal on video, threatening illegal action, or inciting others to illegal action, then that should be removed. Saying "Go build one of these and throw it at a government building" should not be allowed. Simply showing HOW to build one sho
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>>>Now if someone is doing something illegal on video, threatening illegal action, or inciting others to illegal action, then that should be removed. Saying "Go build one of these and throw it at a government building" should not be allowed.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already said that such speech is protected by the first amendment. They said the only time it would be outlawed, is if the person was actually holding a gun or weapon and saying, "I'm going to kill you." The case where they made this
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Nobody is going to 'join the terrorist cause' because they saw someone shouting nonsense about the 'evil western powers'. The personal ideals videos are harmless except to my ears and opinion of the Human race.
The successful conversion of millions of US citizens to dittoheadism suggests otherwise.
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how else would you understand them if they were not presented to you ?
I think it is potentially a mistake to believe that our Western political machine wants us to understand Muslim extremism. Irrational fear is a much more effective means of controlling the public than dispassionate analysis.
I might hesitate to say such a thing were the evidence not so painfully clear. I love what my country is supposed to stand for, but it is hard to claim that we are on the path of our principles when there is a push to [buzzfeed.com]
Re:Censorship, much? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you don't understand why they hate you, then how can you destroy them ?
Sarin gas.
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Actually to me " more importantly what is your moral justification for killing them if you don't know why they are doing what they are doing?" Actually seems like it should reasonably describe the terrorists in most cases.
Oh sure they get our media (which even we would often like to avoid as it doesn't represent us or our interests well) and crap we want to sell them... But what do they really know about us? Oh sure they get lots of crap from our government (which much like our media lots of us would love t
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The barracks bomb is a good point: the local population felt the French and US troops were no longer neutral bystanders after shelling that killed innocent bystanders and attacks on the Bekaa valley. At that point they became co-belligerents without getting formal notice, while already having irritated Iran to the point it had announced retaliation, as well as several other factions in the civil war. The marines were representatives of a power that was actively involved in the fighting in the region, so no
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Did you really see me advocating carpet bombing the Middle East?
No, and it doesn't matter, and I didn't say carpet bombing. The point of that sentence was going and bombing countries shouldn't have been the first reaction. However I do accept that violence is sometimes is a necessary.
No. You don't know anything about me, but you are making wild assumptions about what I care to know and my position on my government's actions in the Middle East.
True and fair.
You are offering up strawmen. You are appealing to emotion and using value judgments.
But let's say I was all those things you assumed I am. Your weak argument would do nothing to convince me.
Emotions ? The whole point of that is that we shouldn't appeal to emotions or rash judgment. Understanding them might open you up to the fact that their actions might be a reaction rather than an action. Some of these Iraqis who were blowing themselves to kill American soldier
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The idea behind suppressing undesirable or illegal videos is the same idea behind advertising. Companies spend money on advertising because advertising works. Deleting or otherwise suppressing what amounts to "terrorist advertising" is helpful to suppressing terrorism itself (or at least active recruitment/incitement to terrorism).
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Only 640 removals is more like censorship, little. A drop in the sea basically.
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Why is it that some people believe that if they hide away from something that something ceases to exist?
Google is a business, they don't have to follow freedom of speech in youtube.
If the Terrorist really want to their videos being hosted, they will have to host it themselves, Youtube/Google isn't required by any laws to show them.
Youtube isn't a public forum to speak your mind, it's a business that can exclude anything they want.
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I understand your point, but the point of this story is that the removals are being done at the request of government authorities. This is not Google making independent decisions about what to remove.
Terrorism (Score:2, Insightful)
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Note that Google didn't claim that the videos were terrorist, but rather that they "promoted terrorism". Most people would consider a video that supported the militant operations of al-Qaeda to have "promoted terrorism".
On the other hand, a video that urged extending legal protections to al-Qaeda detainees, such as those in Gitmo, might be widely disagreed with in some circles, but would not be censored by Google for this reason, because it's not promoting terrorism proper. Make sense?
tl;dr -- It's fun to
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I believe you're stating your opinion on what 'promoting terrorism' means, not the governments in question or Google's. Would a factual documentary that showed some element of the Taliban, for example, in a positive light be considered 'promoting terrorism?'
In an age where much political dissent is treated as 'promoting terrorism' there is a pretty obvious slippery slope.
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I think a much better use of their time would be to remove videos that are blatantly detrimental to common knowledge, like factual statements about the existence of Nabiru, or pseudoscience claiming the end of the world, or 'cure AIDS by praying', various conspiracy theories, etc. These things give people false hope which they believe as fact because it is presented in a semi-professional manner. That is the REAL danger on YouTube.
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At one time it was "common knowledge" that the Sun orbited the Earth, the earth was flat, taking a bath more than a few times per year was unhealthy, Newtonian mechanics was completely accurate, The Knack was going to be the new music of the '80s and Iraq had WMD.
Thank goodness you weren't around to censor information that was detrimental to common knowledge.
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Terrorist - someone I don't agree with - probably lives somewhere sandy.
Troll: someone who I don’t agree with - probably lives in a basement somewhere.
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Terrorist: Blows up buildings and transportation.
Troll: Blows up chat rooms and forums (with nonsense)
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Terrorist: Blows up buildings and transportation.
Well, by that definition the US military is by far the biggest terrorist organization on the planet. Of course, the US military's official definition of "terrorist" is "Any male person between the ages of about 14 and 50 that we just killed in a drone strike."
32% (Score:4, Funny)
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Guess they didn't know that the cute kittens were secretly a distraction technique for the terrorist forces. Well played, sirs. Well played.
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Where are these kitty terrorists? ;)
Let the terrorists speak (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Let the terrorists speak (Score:4, Insightful)
No free speech issues here at all. The service is privately owned, they can decide who can show what on their service. You have no rights on their private service.
Now, perhaps you can be mad about who they choose not to serve, but they have the rights, not the people uploading the images.
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Summary and original article imply APCO is a government agency.
It is not.
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TFA mentions much more than APCO, for instance
"the firm said it had received 461 court orders covering a total of 6,989 items between July and December 2011."
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Yes, but not regarding terrorism.
Again, the Slashdot summary reads like the other removed items were terrorism related, and they were not.
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Of course there are free speech issues involved. It's just that this kind of censorship is perfectly legal.
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Insistence on asserting absolute property rights over a forum that Google has made every effort to sell as a public one is also very narrow-minded. If a private entity can censor on a whim, then the only way to have free speech would be to prevent private ownership of public communication mediums.
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In a world with a strong public commons, private restrictions on speech don't affect free speech much. But in a world where the public commons has been impoverished, where almost everything is owned and controlled by (and to benefit) private interests, then freedom of speech only belongs to those who own the means of communication. That's not what we should expect from a democracy.
We once made it illegal to censor or tamper with communications on the state of the art communication network of the day... t
I suspect they may be "terrorists" not terrorists (Score:4, Interesting)
I bet if you could see the list, many of these "terrorists" would turn out to be people just criticizing their governments and revealing government secrets.
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The term "terrorist" is defined by the eye of the beholder. Even though it means something like "a person whose goal is to increase fear among a certain population". They'll use it instead of the real word they are looking for: treasonous. Because treason could be a Good Thing and terrorism can't.
A better idea (Score:2)
Ban all infomercials from YouTube and classify videos promoting terrorism as infomercials.
The Cost of Silence (Score:2)
"It’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard; it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear. And every time you silence someone you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something." -- Christopher Hitchens
Wonder how many were actually promoting terrorism. (Score:2)
Since terrorist has become commonly used to refer to anyone that the government does not like for any reason what so ever, you have to wonder how many of these video actually had anything to do with terrorism.
Why did they TERMINATE/BAN accounts? (Score:2)
If they claim to be about free speech why didn't they just remove the content, why did they terminate accounts (which on YouTube means you are forever banned and it is a violation of their terms of service to EVER in your life to create another account!)?
The difference is like between censoring an article from the newspaper, and blowing up the newspaper office!
Google's handing of YouTube is scary.
The bans for 3 allegations of copyright infringement, which is NOT required by the DMCA, which says you have to
Re:free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no legal guarantee of free speech in this context. The (metaphorical) microphone belongs to Google, since they are hosting everything and letting people upload their stuff at no cost. As long as they can make money off of what people say into their microphone, they'll let them keep talking. And if Google decides they occasionally want to grab their microphone back and make somebody stop talking into it, that's their right. People are free to complain and criticize such treatment, but that doesn't affect Google's right to do what they want with their microphone (metaphor for website).
Ironically, it could arguably be a violation of freedom if Google didn't have the right to censor their own website.
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This is NOT a matter of Google self censorship.
It is government authorities coming to Google with "polite requests" and court orders about certain content that the authorities and government's don't like.
It's likely that they're making profit-based decisions, but those decisions are also being made under government coercion.
Look at what happened to WikiLeaks. They did something the government didn't like, and all of a sudden government strong-arms PayPal, Amazon and others to dissociate themselves. Even
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I take for granted that Google is in bed with the three letter agencies and has been for a long time. I consider it reasonable to assume that government agencies have multiple hooks into the internet both at backbone locations (unencrypted traffic) as well as nodes inside key services like Gmail and Skype so they don't miss out on any of that juicy stuff either.
That irritates me because it probably should be considered unconstitutional, but it would probably take a huge whistleblowing movement to set right
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actually, Wikileaks committed espionage. Or, if it's a U.S. citizen, treason.
Yeah, like Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times? Or perhaps the military were being idiots when they gave the keys to the kingdom to a kid in uniform?
Better still... (Score:2)
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Yes, idealism should be tempered by practicality. Tell me, as a practical matter, how is censorship better than counter propaganda?
Do you think that these people are just going to go away if you censor them? Do you think censorship won't help them paint themselves as persecuted, and serve as a marketing tool for them?
If you think Islamist propaganda is an effective recruitment tool, wouldn't anti-islamist propganda be just as effective? How are you going to counter their arguments if their indoctrination
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Everything has its limits. The problem arises when someone attempts to define those limits. A major problem arises when people attempt to define those limits and then impose them on others who might not see it the same way. What if the Catholic church was put in charge of defining the limits? Suppose all governments defined limits that mimicked those imposed by the Chinese government?
I stick to my absolutist position on free speech because we should always err on the side of favoring unrestricted commun
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the free marketers are usually propagandized fools in the service of the oligarchy. a handful of large corporations that collude with each other and infect the government does not represent any ideal of the free market, but they are the only ones who benefit from free market fundamentalist rhetoric and political action
meanwhile, the only institution actually intended to protect the little guy, the government, is vilified by the clueless little guys. they want to remove their only protection, their governmen
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The statists are propagandized into believing that big government is the solution to the majority of societal problems. They support this massive and inherently corrupt(infected as you say) government in the futile hope that SOME DAY the little people will be able to take over this massive power and use it for the general good. It will never happen, and if it does, it will be a transient situation.
What the statists fail to understand is that concentrated power is an inherently corrupting influence, and th
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i'm a committed capitalist
i just understand, unlike yourself, that there is a difference between capitalism and corporate oligarchy, which is exactly what you play into with your thinking
i also know that a strong central government is the only thing that actually makes a free market (as in fair market) work
and finally, and most importantly, i understand the difference between what the government is supposed to do, and the corruption of our government by special interests
you see the sickness, and you blame t
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no. free speech is important, i support it
the problem is free speech fundamentalism, which is an entirely different enchilada
you are confusing two entirely different concepts
free speech fundamentalism is the idea that speech needs no limits, and ANY limits are therefore as bad and the same as THE WORST KIND of limits
we're talking about people, for example, who equate china squashing all political expression, with the west squashing kiddie porn. they obviously are not the same. but to a free speech fundament
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"SOME forms of speech are not free, and should not be allowed: those that cause real harm to individuals."
Who defines "harm"? If someone hurts your feelings have they caused you harm? If someone advocates lifestyle choices that you deem unhealthy or even destructive (advice you don't want your kids to follow) have they caused "harm"? What about cases where exposing the truth causes "harm"?
Taking an absolutist position on free speech is no more simplistic than pretending you can draw a line through a gian
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Currently, I see many US citizens carrying the corporate flags against the oppression and tyranny of the government...how ironic, when you look at how little the corporations care for people and their needs!
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It seems particularly ironic that you are using a phrase condemning people who refused to stand up against genocide to condemn people who stand up against terrorism.