Should YouTube be a haven for free speech, or should it be a website subject to government intervention and forced to remove videos deemed unsuitable for the site?
I know the answer and so do you, and every right thinking person in the world also know the answer. Free speech is king, and although it means some unsavoury things get said, it is also the proper way to conduct things.
Someone Tell Lieberman
However, one person who doesn’t seem to believe in free speech, at least when it might be something anti-American being said is Joe Lieberman, US senator, and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Last week saw Lieberman send a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt asking that YouTube immediately remove all content produced by any Islamic terrorist organizations.
Google Responded
Google’s response thankfully was to only remove a handful of the most controversial videos, while leaving the rest up and refusing to take them off the site. It also issued a statement free speech was the main concern.
It also went on to inform the senator that rather than stifle debate, the site promotes alternative viewpoints and gives everyone a chance to give theirs in the comments section of each video.
This clearly wasn’t good enough for Lieberman as he restated his concerns about the videos, and asked again that they be removed and not tolerated.
The Essence Of Free Speech
Don’t get me wrong, some of the stuff posted on YouTube is disgusting, showing soldiers being killed and people celebrating this fact, or certain groups expressing hate for another, but that is the essence of free speech, a tenet that America is surely built upon?
The other thing to remember is that even if YouTube were to remove every single video which Lieberman and his hard-line friends didn’t happen to like, they would just pop up on another site anyway, so it would be a pointless exercise.
Of course, Homeland Security know this, and earlier in the month issued a report titled Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat in which the question “what, if any, new laws” were needed to make the Internet less of a haven for radical groups.
Letting The Terrorists Win
I really hope they come up with the answer of none otherwise I can see the US, and consequently, the rest of the western world becoming a free speech-free zone, and the Internet taking the brunt of the legislation. Now that’s a worrying thought.
To this end I really hope Google and YouTube stick to their guns and refuse to comply with the wishes of Lieberman, as it surely be the first step on a very slippery slope to becoming China, North Korea or Iran. Then the terrorists will surely have won.
