YouTube has been everyone’s favorite soap box for quite some time now. For anyone who lives in a country where TV programs are just painful to watch, YouTube is such a lifesaver. Not only is it a great source of information and misinformation, it’s also a practical platform for citizen journalism. It has been so effective in its instant gratification, and so convincing in its democracy, that we almost forget that our worshiped soap box is still controlled by a corporation that has its own interest to look out for. Not every video is treated equal. Sure, it can’t prevent you from getting on the soap box, but it can give you a defect megaphone; it can’t tell the pedestrians to go away, but it can employ warm bodies to pose as bystanders to block you from view.
UPDATE (03/24/08): watch how all videos critical of Scientology are frozen (with one mysterious exception of the second segment of “The S Files”, which YouTube held hostage for some 29 hours after the upload before releasing it online), while all non-Scientology related videos play just fine.
UPDATE (03/16/08): Scientology has relaunched its websites and uploaded its own self-produced videos of propaganda and deception. Interesting coincidence?
screenshot 1:(click on the pictures to see them in original size):This is just a one time thing that happened last month. Technical glitch on YouTube? I had no problems searching other key words though.
Remember those Net Neutrality videos you watched on CC a while ago? Turns out some corporation not only wants to control the Internet traffic, they want to block public forums as well. Last year Comcast, one of the biggest cable companies and Internet Service Providers in the United States, was caught injecting forged TCP/RST packets into users’ traffic to interfere with their BitTorrent uploads and downloads. FCC, or the Federal Communications Commission, therefore set up a public hearing to take place on February 25th at the Harvard Law School on a first-come, first-served basis. Based on discussions on this public forum as well as written comments from private citizens, the regulators may establish on what ISPs may and may not do.
The video was taken a few days ago at the Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago, with Eddie Vedder extending “Daughter” with part of “Another Brick in the Wall” from Pink Floyd, during which the following lines were sung: “George Bush leave this world alone. George Bush leave this world alone. George Bush find yourself another home.”
Thailand is banning YouTube for hosting videos ridiculing the monarchy, after giving a 10-year prison term only last week to a Swiss man for spraying graffiti on the poster of the king. Weeks after lifting a similar ban on YouTube, Turkey is now considering blocking all websites that are insulting to Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, as well as websites with information on Kurdish rebels in the country.
So what do you do when your dictator governments are denying you access to information on the Internet? Reporters Without Borders offers some technical ways to get around censorship.
On March 3, 1991, African American taxi driver Rodney King was stopped by four LAPD officers for speeding after an alleged high speed chase. When King refused to assume the felony prone position, the four police officers fired a taser, and started kicking and beating him repeatedly with their batons. King suffered a fractured skull and internal injuries in the attack. George Holliday, an Argentinian immigrant who lived in a nearby apartment, captured the incident with his video camera, which was broadcast on different networks on the same day. Charge of felony evasion against King was later dropped, and the four officers were indicted for assault. A year later, on April 29, despite the obvious excess use of extreme force witnessed by the world, three of the officers were acquitted by a predominantly white jury (one Latin and one Asian out of twelve). Hours after the verdict one of the worst riots in Los Angeles history erupted, which lasted four days, causing more than 50 deaths, over 2300 injuries and over 7000 arrests. The case against the four officers was reopened and two of the four officers, Powell and Koon were found guilty and sentenced to 30 months in federal correctional camps.
Years later at a gas station an African American approached Holliday and said, “Yeah, you don’t recognized me.” “No,” replied Holliday. “You saved my life,” said Rodney King.
