August 29th, 2007
Should YouTube take down pro-Nazi video clips?
After complaints, Google now says it will remove videos depicting Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda from its YouTube site in Germany.
Already illegal in Germany, the videos of such wretched content as pro-Nazi films, clips of Nazi-era rallies and (thankfully much smaller) current-era expressions, have drawn takedown demands from the Central Council of Jews in Germany as well as from government-sponsored Internet watchdog Jugendschutz.de
Bloomberg reports that viewers have filed more than 100 complaints to YouTube about the clips, first reported yesterday by German broadcaster SWR’s “Report Mainz” program, which also said that the Central Council of Jews in Germany may sue the company.
“We don’t want these right-wing videos on our platform and they’ll be removed,” Hamburg-based Google spokesperson Kay Oberbeck, tells Bloomberg. He said Google will cooperate with state authorities in Germany, where the distribution of Nazi material is illegal.
According to Jugendschutz’s legal adviser, Thomas Guenter, Google has removed about a third of the videos the watchdog cited. YouTube has a system that allows viewers to identify clips as inappropriate, “though no system is perfect,” Oberbeck tells Bloomberg.
What’s interesting, though, is that in the Comments section for these filthy clips, reactions ranged from urging an immediate take-down of these clips, to the possible “educational” value of some of these clips.
By “educational value,” I guess the reference is to show light on this ugliness, and thus hopefully forestall further espousal.
I see that point about recognizing evil. I also have strong First Amendment tendencies. But then again, if some of the “people” in that video never lived, I’d have cousins who might have had the chance to be born.
So what do you think?
Loading ...Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
