Google earlier admitted to giving up the IP of a blogger accused of defamation after revealing some info about a corruption and tax fraud case in which three councilmen were involved. YouTube seems to be trying to fill it’s papa’s shoes and closes down an account of an Egyptian resident that posted videos of brutal behavior by local police officers, voting irregularities and anti-government
demonstrations.
Wael Abbas’ channel currently reads "This account is suspended" and he confessed to Reuters that the Google-owned YouTube sent him an email announcing its action to come and based it on the fact that "there were lots of complaints about the content, especially the content of torture." Why would someone rather report such a fact instead of filing an official complaint? YouTube’s guidelines stating that "Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it" might be a starting point to understanding the Mountain View based company’s video sharing service’s decision but I sincerely doubt it.
It’s just that Google is supposedly on a mission to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible" and that gives me a hard time to understand what’s with the privacy issues it has. The images and video clips that Abbas had posted were interesting to organizations across the globe in a high degree and thus it needed to be there and be available until the end of time if need be and if the anti-torture activist’s voice would not be heard otherwise.
There are some sites available to those that have such images that depict abusive action by authorities or other human rights violations, like hub.witness.org but they don’t have nearly the amount of publicity or the reach that YouTube has. The great Google is not as open as it should be, apparently. Or at least as it says it is.
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