February 08, 2012

Whose Side Is YouTube On?

By Dan Riehl | October 04, 2006 | 11:19

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Evidently the Little Green Footballs blog placed a video on line to address the issue discussed in this post and subsequently the Council on American Islamist Relations (CAIR) took steps to have anti-radical Islamist videos pulled from YouTube. And according to this report via Michelle Malkin, who has had one of her videos banned, some have also had their YouTube accounts closed as a result.

I asked YouTube to inform me of the exact nature of the "inappropriateness" of the video. But no response. The banning of my innocuous video is not an isolated incident. Anti-jihad YouTube users have reported having their videos yanked and accounts suspended, including Crusader18.

Update 13:05 by Matthew Sheffield. By contrast, Islamic terrorist sympathizers and possibly the terrorists themselves have been using the free hosting service to post videos.

Another point: The email YouTube sent to Malkin states that her video was pulled because it was "inappropriate" and advised her to refer to the site's terms of use. I clicked over there and found the relevant portion:

C. In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant YouTube all of the license rights granted herein; (ii) publish falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage YouTube or any third party; (iii) submit material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate; (iv) post advertisements or solicitations of business: (v) impersonate another person.

Considering that there's nothing in the TOU about religion and that Malkin's video wasn't unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing or encouraged illegal conduct, I'm guessing YouTube yanked it after it received several complaints about the clip being "hateful." Does this mean that basically any video can get yanked from YouTube?

Somehow I doubt that if it had been an anti-Republican or anti-Democrat video that it would've been pulled. It seems more likely that this is another example of Islam's special standard.