New from our friends at youtube - video terrorism lessons

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:14 am

Depending on how busy the national news is in the coming days, I think this bit of local news might go national and others that don't like what they do might jump on the bandwagon: http://www3.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO57336/

This could be spun so well if the right people were on board. Maybe it's just all the political undertones of what i've been reading lately, but you can almost taste the possibility of using this to take them down - I bet Viacom is paying off some reporters somewhere to make this an expose.

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:07 am

Oshi-
The rights of citizens are about to be divided by zero. Or the Patriot Act.

On another note, what are people's opinions on the availabilty of weapon making? I'd hate to see the information pulled from wherever the will can be enforced, but by the same token the information is going to be abused seriously if it becomes widespread I think, as American society continues its degeneration of community values.

Shazzy · Post by **Shazzy** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:43 am

Orwell wrote:Oshi-

On another note, what are people's opinions on the availabilty of weapon making? I'd hate to see the information pulled from wherever the will can be enforced, but by the same token the information is going to be abused seriously if it becomes widespread I think, as American society continues its degeneration of community values.

Keeping stupid people in ignorance doesn't make them less stupid; makes them less harmful, maybe, but it's not solving the problem of stupid parents raising stupid children.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 4:06 am

I'm pretty sure youtube's going to more concerned about their image than the political implications of filtering such stuff. According to their previous stances over copywrited material, though, they don't have the power to filter it. I think they're going to be made to either eat their words and fess up that they can filter stuff (and open themselves to lawsuits from media outlets for lying and saying they couldn't in the past) or get pubically scorned for being "supporters of terrorism."

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 12:13 pm

Shazzy wrote: it's not solving the problem of stupid parents raising stupid children.

xeleventy

It's really so not-new though. Just this another trans-generational scapegoat where the parent generation is scared of the bad kids and is trying to find something other than themselves to account for the screwup.

In fairness, you don't need youtube to find a way to build something to hurt other people, nor do you need a bomb to do something stupid.

JaddziaDax · Post by **JaddziaDax** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 12:38 pm

interesting enough when i was watching random videos yesterday i came across a lot of similar things: or at least video bloggers pointing fingers at other video bloggers about being terrorists or whatever

one video blogger got his video taken down because he was expressing his beliefs (or possible sarcasm) on terrorism only to have every one of his friends post it several times again under the tube's nose... >.>

i dont think that the tube has the manpower right now to get through every video on their site, but they are owned by google now so im sure that they can BUY the manpower

godix · Post by **godix** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:36 pm

I've never looked this stuff up on youtube but when I was a kid there was the anarchist cookbook style of books. Most of them either did not caution you about a dangerous procedure or they did caution you but not enough. Sometimes they are just flat out wrong, often in dangerous ways. So consider it evolution in action, the stupid will blow themselves up and the smart won't. So the smart learn how to blow up other people, big deal, they're smart so even without the video they'd figure out how to hurt others if they sat down and thought about it. So all told not only do I think the videos should stay on youtube, I think it's providing a service for humanity.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:32 pm

I wasn't even getting at the whole "the internet has these kind of things and always has" or the "it's right/wrong to have info like this availible to kids," but more the "holy shit, with this story combined with the mindless, easily manipulated American population and atmosphere of political rhetoric/fearmongering an entity that has an ax to grind like viacom could easily put youtube's balls in a vicegrip."

godix · Post by **godix** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 12:52 am

Not that it's overly important, at least not on a site like the org, but you do realize the US has some of the widest free speech capabilities of the world right? Seriously, list almost any prominent first world country and I could probably tell you why they have less free speech than America. But that's not the point, the point is that right alongside the freedom of speech is a rarely stated freedom of non-speech. No person or organization should be forced give a forum to speech they do not approve of. Which means that youtube can decide they don't want to carry anything at all and there is NOTHING wrong with it, the same as there's nothing wrong with the fact the org prohibits links to or generally even discussing downloaded footage. So you may be right, this may focus attention on youtube and the public will force them to censor bomb making videos or lose business. However I fail to see why that's a problem. That's how free speech is supposed to work.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 1:09 am

I'd hardly call it a problem - especially not one of free speach. They've talked themselves into a corner with disputes over copywrite violations (CBS, Viacom, etc.) and their defense has always been that they are unable to filter any content (not unwilling, unable). There were reports floating around back in october about viacom executives telling their underlings to flood youtube with porn and time how fast it took to take it down - their results almost proved youtube does have filtering capibilities they can use when they want to - it's become a point of contention. Now as it relates to this... if a call came out for them to filter these "how to make bombs" videos and they do anything but lament over the fact that they are unable to filter (like they have in the past) they are essentially coming out and admitting they were lying to all the major broadcasters they gave their little song-and-dance to last fall - thus putting their theorized protection under the DMCA in jeopardy (for those that are unaware, gootube's lawyers and other legal scholars believe they fall under the protection of the DMCA's poorly worded clause on ISPs - they are a service provider on the internet... yes it's worded that poorly - which offers protection from prossicution, given they cooperate with copywrite holders and do not make a profit by promoting the illegal use of their service - this is the same clause that grockster was successfuly taken down under because it was ruled their business model granted them revenue based on how long a user was on for, and the ones that were on the longest were breaking the law).