[339] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] YouTube and Global Censorship: A Proposal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Wed Feb 27 13:11:07 2008
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Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:27:23 -0800
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YouTube and Global Censorship: A Proposal
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000373.html
Greetings. The recent incident of Pakistan's blocking of YouTube
over a video that Pakistan considered to be "blasphemous" once again
brings into focus some key Internet issues. In this case,
apparently due to routing miscalculations and error, Pakistan's
attempts to block YouTube from their own population disrupted
YouTube access around the world. This problem was gradually
repaired (though still points to serious infrastructural issues).
But Pakistan still succeeded in killing the video on YouTube
globally, reportedly by demanding that Google pull it down under the
vague terms of YouTube's usage guidelines.
It's time to loudly question the appropriateness of letting any
group succeed in censoring material globally on a site like YouTube,
simply because, essentially, that group just doesn't like the
material involved.
Obviously if we're going to operate on the basis that everything
that offends groups in any part of the world will be deleted
globally from YouTube (or wherever), we could end up with a lowest
common denominator of content where an old episode of "Leave It to
Beaver" would be banned. As various groups see such successful
take-downs, they will only become emboldened to make more demands.
The primary issue for Google and other players in this space isn't
international legal action, but international business and access.
This is both understandable and explicit -- Google has been very
clear that access considerations have driven its participation in
the Chinese censorship system, apparently (judging from public
statements) against their founder's own best instincts.
I don't necessarily condemn such actions out of hand. There is a
valid argument to be made that having access -- even censored
access -- brings significant longer-term benefits to these populations.
But let's at least be direct about what's going on and what trade-offs
are involved.
The Chinese case is very different from what we're talking about in
terms of the Pakistan video take-down. The censored version of
Google offered to the Chinese is not also forced upon the rest of
the world as the only Google choice. The removal of a video from
YouTube globally does force that choice on everyone, everywhere.
That other copies are of course available from other sites isn't the
matter of concern here, the question is the appropriateness of the
action in the first place.
In "Search Engine Dispute Notifications: Request For Comments" I
proposed a framework for the *carefully controlled and managed*
insertions of "dispute notifications" on search results to help deal
with such controversies on Google's main search engine
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000253.html ).
I now propose that a similar concept could be applied to services
such as YouTube, as a preferred alternative to global video
take-downs. That is, instead of being able to easily demand that a
video be expunged from YouTube (for other than DMCA-related
reasons), a procedure would be in place to tag the associated video
in a manner that would display the noted objections to that
material, and could even be used by national authorities to impose
regional or local blocking (distasteful as this is) without
affecting the rest of the planet's rights to view the video in
question if they wish.
Actual global take-downs would be much more limited, e.g. to
clear-cut DMCA and universally egregious materials such as child
abuse-related videos and the like, which are far less likely to
create value judgment dilemmas for the services involved.
I am increasingly convinced that the careful and controlled tagging
of videos, search results, etc. in such manners could be a useful
compromise between "no action" and "global censorship" -- and while
I understand that such tagging systems would be non-trivial to
implement and manage, they seem on their face to be far more
desirable and fair than any obvious alternatives.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
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