UK gov wants to censor legal but "unsavoury" YouTube content

  • 18 March 2014
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Userlevel 7
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Last week, the Financial Times revealed that Google has given British security the power to quickly yank terrorist content offline.

The UK government doesn't want to stop there, though - what it really wants is the power to pull "unsavoury" content, regardless of whether it's actually illegal - in other words, it wants censorship power.

The news outlet quoted UK's security and immigration minister, James Brokenshire, who said that the government must do more to deal with material "that may not be illegal but certainly is unsavoury and may not be the sort of material that people would want to see or receive."

He further told Wired.co.uk in a statement that the targeting of content is part of the government's fight against terror:

    Terrorist propaganda online has a direct impact on the radicalisation of individuals and we work closely with the internet industry to remove terrorist material hosted in the UK or overseas.

Brokenshire says that the government is also gung-ho about options wherein social media sites tweak their algorithms to keep nasty content from popping its head up at all, or at least get to the point that such content is served up with more balanced material.

Of specific concern are Britons getting radicalised by travelling to take part in the ongoing Syrian conflict, Wired reports.

The Home Office told Wired that any videos flagged by the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) for review have been found to be in breach of counter-terrorism laws, with 29,000 such having been removed across the web since February 2010.
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Wired points out that if, in fact, the government were to take the reins and actually force YouTube to remove content, it would be breaching Article 10(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights, related to the right to freedom of expression.
 
Full Article
 
This is controversial but my own opinion is that something needs to be done, but the big question is What?
 

3 replies

Userlevel 7
Hi Jasper
 
Agreed...I am with you on the fact that something does need to be done to instill a modicum of sense in all of this...but as you say...what? http://www.forumsextreme.com/images2/sCo_hmmthink.gif
 
Unfortunately there is no easy answer because the only peopel who speak out as the 'extremists' (used iin the largest sense of the word I hasten to add) on both sides of the divide.
 
Regards
 
 
Baldrick
Userlevel 7
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They have the power (as stated), through Google, to block on YouTube. Of course, we would all want to see some certain, unspeakable, content blocked, but problem with this is it could be a 'thin end of the wedge' which, if implemented might be used in many other, possibly unjustified, instances. That is, we become reliant on their definition of what may be 'unsavoury'.
 
Censorship, in the wrong hands, is a very dangerous thing.
 
 Web censorship: the net is closing in | Technology | The Guardian
Userlevel 7
Dermot, you are correct but unfortunately the whole argument is tautological in nature...there is no satisfactory answer due to...IMHO...human nature. :(

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