December 01, 2008
Youtube Smackdown Makes NYT's
IT’S NOT ONLY FOREIGN COUNTRIES that are eager to restrict speech on Google and YouTube. Last May, Senator Joseph Lieberman’s staff contacted Google and demanded that the company remove from YouTube dozens of what he described as jihadist videos. (Around the same time, Google was under pressure from “Operation YouTube Smackdown,” a grass-roots Web campaign by conservative bloggers and advocates to flag videos and ask YouTube to remove them.) After viewing the videos one by one, Wong and her colleagues removed some of the videos but refused to remove those that they decided didn’t violate YouTube guidelines. Lieberman wasn’t satisfied. In an angry follow-up letter to Eric Schmidt, the C.E.O. of Google, Lieberman demanded that all content he characterized as being “produced by Islamist terrorist organizations” be immediately removed from YouTube as a matter of corporate judgment — even videos that didn’t feature hate speech or violent content or violate U.S. law. Wong and her colleagues responded by saying, “YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view.” In September, Google and YouTube announced new guidelines prohibiting videos “intended to incite violence.”The article states that Senator Lieberman wanted videos from "Islamist terrorist organizations" removed. What the good senator means is videos produced by Specially Designated Groups as declared by the US Department of state. Such groups would be al-Qaeda's as-Sahab productions, al-Qaeda in Iraq's al-Fuqan productions, Ansar al-Sunnah, Hamas, Hizbollah and a host of other specially designated terrorist groups which are too numerous to name.
So the statement that some of the videos, "didn’t feature hate speech or violent content or violate U.S. law." is misleading. There is a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and executive orders 12947 and 13224. These are designed freeze the assets of these groups in the United States. These forbid providing services (even free ones) to specially designated terrorist groups.
We do not seek to withhold information from loyal Americans who wish to be informed so they may may form an opinion or to censor news. We've used the terrorists own propaganda to point out the barbarous evil that these groups perpetrate as part of our reporting here.
What we seek to do is stop specially designated terrorist groups and their supporters from using US services to promote violent Jihad against the United States of America, her citizens and those fighting to protect us all.
Those who say we should allow our enemies free access to our resources might as well say we should hand the Ansar al-Sunnah butchers the knife with which they intend to behead us.
Jawa Report's Jihadtube Archive here.
Counter Terrorism archive here.
Online terrorism archive here.
Hat Tip: Jane.
By Howie at December 1, 2008 12:47 PM | | l digg this
