CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Takedown’ Category

YouTube treads fine line over Finnish gunman video: “Within a couple of hours of the shootings in Kaujahoki, several videos posted
by the YouTube user Wumpscut86 had been taken down by the site.”

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

Flaws in YouTube gangster video vetting exposed - Times Online

From The Times, September 18, 2008: Flaws in YouTube gangster video vetting exposed

A Times investigation has exposed failures in the video-sharing website’s monitoring system and prompted action to tighten security

Marcus Leroux, Kaya Burgess and Fran Yeoman

YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing website, this week removed over two dozen videos glorifying gangs and gang violence which had been on its website in some cases for over 18 months.

Following a Times investigation into harmful and inappropriate material on Youtube, the website took down 30 film clips, most shot in grainy video showing hooded youths brandishing illegal weapons such as machetes, hand guns and even sub-machine guns. Google admitted they were clearly in breach of its own user guidelines which had recently been revised to deal with gang videos.

Google’s Head of Communications in Britain, former Newsnight editor Peter Barron, said that as a result of concern about the use of the website by gangs, it had now introduced new guidelines prohibiting users from showing weapons in their videos in order to intimidate people, but that these had only “gone live” on Friday.

He blamed “teething problems” with the new policy for the fact that its own monitors had failed to removed the material after a Times reporter posing as an ordinary user had flagged them up as inappropriate three days after the new policy had been introduced.
(more…)

Senator targets YouTube, but law (section 230, CDA) not on his side | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Sen. Joe Lieberman wants YouTube and its rivals to delete any videos produced by al-Qaida, other Islamic terrorist groups, and any suspected sympathizers. But because there’s no U.S. law requiring deletion–at least not yet–there’s not much the onetime veep candidate can do except complain.

On Monday, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee suggested in a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt that the company wasn’t doing enough to remove videos that are violent or could be used by terrorist groups to enlist followers. ‘By taking action to curtail the use of YouTube to disseminate the goals and methods of those who wish to kill innocent civilians, Google will make a singularly important contribution to this important national effort,’ Lieberman wrote.