Youtube removes ban on Filip Dewinter
A very interesting thing happened over the last 24 hours on the Internet. A blogger who goes by the handle, ‘Vlad Tepes’ or ‘Vladtepesblog’ subtitled a video taken at a meeting in Germany of the Pro Koln movement, a group of people who oppose the Islamification of Europe with a focus on Germany. This video was uploaded to youtube and had some 700 views within a day or so, after which it was removed for violation of content rules according to youtube with no further explanation or appeals options.
Vlad Tepes did a video himself showing his concern for this desicision which is posted here at IFPS
Within 24 hours of this video appearing, youtube did something extraordinary. They replaced the video and it is now live again at youtube.
Pamela Geller at her blog Atlas Shrugs also posted the video of Vlad, as did KGS at Tundra Tabloids, which means it had a great deal of exposure in the blogosphere. Of course, I am connecting a lot of dots without any hard evidence. Youtube may have had their own internal appeals process and replaced the video utterly unaware of the response to this by so many in the blogosphere and its a very safe bet Youtube will not be publishing their reasoning on this anytime soon. However, on the surface, it would appear this is a great victory for freedom of speech for all of us. That by perhaps risking banishment by popular forums such as youtube, one may score a victory for freedom of speech.
No matter how one feels about any issue the suppression of speech is never the answer. Whether it is European Holocaust denial as we see in Austria and Germany or if it is suppression of Islamic ideas for violent manifest destiny or opposition to the above, more freedom is always the answer. Suppression of speech nearly always means greater attention to the ideas one suppresses for better or for worse. No better examples can be found than those of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions in their persecutions of Canadian crackpots with anti semitic answering machine messages turned into international celebrities by the attention they garnered due to state persecution of their right of free speech.
(for more on this I highly recommend Ezra Levant’s excellent book ‘Shakedown’)
Imagine for example that people had read Mein Kampf and took Hitler at his word. Would the war have started in earnest sooner and less damage done? Could the genocide have been prevented? Imagine that all of us were aware of the threats of Iran’s belicose president today. Would it help create the public will to preempt any horrors he clearly has planned?
In any case, youtube made the right decision. Keeping people ignorant of the facts especially of a speech at a political gathering is the worst possible way to achive the outcome you want, no matter what side you are on of the issues.
James Cohen
www.internationalfreepresssociety.org
Comments
By James Cohen on May 18th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I have looked into youtube’s policy on this. They did in fact review the video themselves and did remove it for what they call abuse of the community guidelines. They did replace the video however they did leave a strike on the account of vladtepesblog, so in fact it was not a win but optics. Youtube elected to replace the video but make it easy to delete the account at a whim in future without further warning. In fact a more insidious action than the removal of the video and a strike on the account.
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