Date: Thursday, April 3, 2008

Google Face Commons Over YouTube Rape Video

Google has been hauled before a House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee to explain why a three-minute video showing the alleged date rape of a 25-year-old mother was allowed to remain on the site for so long.

The video showed the woman being sexually assaulted by three youths, allegedly after having her drink spiked. By the time it was removed under YouTube’s graphic content policy, it had already been viewed over 600 times.

Kent Walker, Google general counsel, explained to the committee that he was unsure why the video wasn’t removed quickly enough. He said: “I do not know exactly what happened, but it was a mistake.” However, his apology was criticised by a number of MPs, including Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmathen East and Dinefwr, who said that the company’s failure to swiftly remove the offensive video “surely shows your system is completely inadequate.”

The controversy surrounding the rape video has led to renewed calls for tighter restrictions on the video-sharing site. However, Mr Walker hit back against these pleas and claimed that pre-screening each video on the channel would be ineffective, against the spirit of the internet, and potentially damaging to creativity. He said: “If you tried to take that vast amount of content and pre-screen all of it, it's neither efficient nor effective and would burden the process of creativity.”  Despite this, Mr Walker did tell the committee that a great deal of material on the site was screened, and that videos that are flagged as offensive are removed relatively quickly. He said: “Once flagged, more than 50 per cent is removed within half an hour; a large majority is removed within an hour.”

The YouTube hearing comes just a week after the publication of a report commissioned by the Prime Minister about the dangers that the internet poses to children.

Source:

The Times

Daily Telegraph