Youtube censorship


Via Pharyngula, a long and rambling video by a fellow named Nick Gisburne, whose entire account at Google (the "first do no evil" folks) owned Youtube was closed without notice because he posted a video that consisted of a slide show quoting violent passages from the Koran. The poor guy seems genuinely upset and mystified, and his protestations of moderation seem believable. Gisburne is an atheist, and has posted a lot of material on atheism, but it appears that Youtube took umbrage at the Koran excerpts for reasons having nothing to do with his atheism per se. Apparently, they appeared to think that quoting the Koran is some sort of hate speech against Muslims. Gisburne, would argue, I assume, that the Koran is no different than the Bible so far as objectionable content goes.

This raises a larger issue than Gisburne's right to access at Youtube. Some years ago the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that malls were not public forums, so mall owners could pick and choose who they would allow to engage in what would, in such a public forum, be considered protected speech. Courts in other states went the other way. I'm not sure if the Supreme Court ever weighed in on that particular issue.

Sites such as Youtube are arguably public forums. They certainly function as such-more than malls, more than parks, more than almost any non-virtual location that comes to mind. It is their entire reason for being.

I don't question Google's right to maintain standards of some sort, but it should not have the right to be arbitrary. We have a large body of first amendment law, and that law should serve as a guide to what should or should not be allowed on these sites. Whatever the standards might be, Google should not have the right to arbitrarily and permanently remove content. Some process for redress should be provided. What happened to this guy was unjust. All of his stuff was deleted without any prior notice or opportunity to be heard. That would be a denial of due process of the first order if the government did it (statement void if George Bush decides you are an enemy combatant). Google is not the government, but that doesn't mean that its power to abridge the speech of its users should be unlimited. If we want to keep democracy strong (or bring it back to some semblance of strength) we have to make sure that free speech is the rule in those fora in which people choose to speak. Right now, those fora are owned by corporations like Youtube. They should be considered public fora and their users should be protected by the First Amendment.
Posted: Monday - February 12, 2007 at 08:00 PM          

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