You Tube v. World
So I found it interesting to hear that Pakistan has banned You Tube in their country. What I didn’t know was that Brazil had also banned You Tube last year. Apparently a video of Daniela Cicarelli, a famous supermodel, having sex on a beach with her boyfriend became the most viewed video in Brazil for several days.
I think this brings up an interesting topic of discussion. Should You Tube succumb to the pressures of other countries to retract videos from their website?
I personally think You Tube, except in cases of copyright, should allow whatever gets uploaded to their site to stay there. I think the world has a great opportunity for positive change because a medium of information exists between all countries. Granted, some would say that if a country blocks You Tube, the opportunity for that country goes away. However, for the most part, You Tube presents an opportunity for people to export their cultures. It offers a chance for individuals to communicate to millions in a way never seen before. Whether people use that opportunity for good or bad should be for individuals to decide. Most people are going to use You Tube for brainless and wasteful activity. However, I feel the potential good outweighs the inevitable bad.
Last year, Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras, was caught in the middle of a corruption scandal because of an implicating video on You Tube. To me, this represents the good that can come from the site. It gives public officials less of a wall to hide behind. It makes them more accountable not just to their own people but to the entire international community.
If You Tube sets a precedent for allowing countries to bully it around, a great opportunity will be lost.
I am very sympathetic to your case against censorship and for free speech. Very sympathetic.
However, when it comes to a corporation’s decision to self-censor to appease an authoritarian government, the calculus may be different. Certainly the precedent is already set. I believe that all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) have provided censored versions for the Republic of China that would meet the filters in that country. Ideally, that would not be necessary, but if noncompliance means that Google/Youtube/whatever will not be accessible at all within that country, we can’t really expect a company to start hating money.
So I guess I am against censorship completely from a policy standpoint, but when censorship is the policy, I can understand why companies want to comply so they can still have access to the market.
David M Manes
25 Feb 08 at 8:56 pm
Ideally the free flow of information should be considered first and foremost. However, it’s hard to trump the policy of a nation like the People’s Republic of China.
In the end though it’s hard to fight the globalization of the telecommunications market, even if at first its curtailed to meet the policies of a given nation.
A perfect example of this is the recent YouTube videos released by Chinese political “dissidents” that expose the intrusive measures taken by the Communist Party to tale, observe, and scrutinize the daily tasks of these “enemies of state.”
S.C. Denney
25 Feb 08 at 10:18 pm
I’m really advocating for You Tube as a citizen. I don’t think they should have to leave the videos up. I simply want them to.
Chris McNeal
26 Feb 08 at 6:05 pm
Well, although I’m typically a proponent of free flow of information and against censuring, and also typically in support of sharing culture, I think this just changed my mind on all that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_tLat70wMI
Dan Sewell
27 Feb 08 at 4:31 pm