US senator calls for YouTube to pull terrorist content

by Stevie Smith - May 20 2008, 11:06

In a somewhat unusual and worrying content removal request, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) has written to YouTube parent company Google Inc. asking for the video-posting Web site to pull content clips produced by Islamic terrorists.

According to Lieberman, many of the controversial videos he is looking to have removed from YouTube show “horrific attacks on American soldiers” based in the Middle East.

The concerned Connecticut politician also notes that other videos depict “weapons training, speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and general material intended to radicalize potential recruits.”

In pressuring Google to drop such sensitive material from its hugely popular pages, Lieberman has cited the company’s own YouTube content guidelines, which strictly prohibit the posting of any forms of gratuitous violence.

However, even if YouTube should seek out and remove the terrorist clips highlighted by Lieberman, terrorism analyst Ben Venzke offers that it will have very little impact on the online availability of video content relating to terrorism.

Specifically, Venzke has told ABC News that several other online destinations provide similar video access and many more new sites appear quickly whenever a single offending destination is shunted from the Net.

“The problem is the very nature of the Internet itself,” he commented. “It makes controlling and denying access to information simply impossible.”

In answer to Lieberman’s request for content removal, YouTube has said it has “examined and removed” many of those put forth for consideration by the senator because they “depicted gratuitous violence, advocated violence, or used hate speech.”

However, YouTube also noted that other supposedly contentious videos targeted by Lieberman remain posted to the site as “they did not violate our Community Guideline” and removal would compromise free speech and the right to express unpopular points of view.

Specifically, YouTube said its decision not to drop all of Lieberman’s listed videos was based on many of those clips including non-violent and non-hate speech content that merely mentioned or featured terrorist organisations.

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