YouTube Fights Back

Just out of curiosity, why did this little blow to international terrorism take so damn long? I'm all for keeping this little series of tubes open and free from unreasonable restriction, but the idea that YouTube has been removing videos for copyright violations but not violent, hateful and potentially murderous messages...along with education viewers on how to act on those messages? Why did it take Joe freaking Lieberman to get people's attention?

It's very similar to child pornography; everybody recognizes, internationally, that that material both stems from unacceptable, repugnant activities, and that it also helps perpetuate them. In one case it's child molestation, and in another, it's hate speech and try-this-at-home walkthroughs on bomb-building. The scope of damage is obviously different, but they both clearly represent a public menace.

That's what allows me to advocate a restriction on free speech, especially over the Internet, which is something I'm not ordinarily prone to doing.

There's a good argument to be made that keeping such videos out in the open permits intelligence agencies to track who's viewing them. But that tends to get into privacy issues, and is within spitting distance of the PATRIOT Act. Furthermore, if you take that initial easy access to the material away, that starts to narrow down the number of people who are willing to put in the effort to find the stuff. The truly dedicated ones were going to find it anyway, and if they didn't find the extremist material, they were going to make their own. But this helps with the low-hanging fruit...the bored or disaffected who might have come across the stuff casually.

And the "whack-a-mole" point is valid. If you shut them down off YouTube, they'll go somewhere else. But that goes back to the child-porn example. If it becomes progressively more difficult to find using mainstream websites, all but the most dedicated searchers will give up and do something (hopefully) more lawful with their time. It's the same theory that leads China to use basic obstructive techniques on their "Great Firewall." Any decent hacker can get around the Chinese net controls, but they're not doing it for hackers. They're doing it to help corral the general population.

Not that I'm advocating corralling anybody. But big enterprises like YouTube have an obligation to parse the most offensive and dangerous material out there, and I remain surprised that they didn't have any restrictions on it until now. You couldn't stand on a streetcorner and pass out how-to flyers on bomb-building. Someone would call the police and you would be out of luck.

This will obviously not stop people who want to hear violent hate speeches, see attacks on American troops, or learn how to build a bomb. But it does force them to take additional steps and expend additional effort. This additional time and effort is the cornerstone of the three D's- Deter, Delay, Disrupt. Making it tougher- even if only a little- to find the videos that they want will help deter the half-hearted, delay the committed, and provide a little more time to help disrupt their activities.