September 16, 2008

At what Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn). is calling his request, YouTube Inc. has updated its acceptable content guidelines to effectively ban videos with the potential to incite violence.

The video uploading and social media site had previously turned down a request from chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental affairs to remove videos produced and sponsored by terrorists which showed assassinations, deaths of US soldiers, and other violent acts.

The new guidelines, which state that “predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people’s personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate the terms of use are taken very seriously.”

Sen. Lieberman is also asking Google, Inc, the parent company of YouTube, to remove all videos that have been created by terrorist organizations, whether they violate the guidelines or not.

While some are in favor of the new guidelines, others believe that they infringe on the right to free speech, and that Internet-based sites should be free of governmental intervention.  Some people, like CEO of IT research firm Techdirt Inc, Mike Masnick, question the lasting effectiveness of banning terrorist produced videos from being posted to YouTube.

“Those videos will quickly pop back up on other sites that won’t take them down,” Masnick told ComputerWorld.com in an interview this week. “Second, most of those videos are preaching to the choir. It’s highly unlikely that very many people are being recruited by terrorists’ causes by a grainy video on YouTube.”

Failure to adhere to the new video submission guidelines could result in a permanent banning from YouTube.