“”Problem is that the government departments in charge of protecting consumers and citizens haven’t had budgets to maintain current workload.””

Ah Yeah, I want more of my money going to Washington, they have such a great track record of spending it wisely”

I don’t plan on the government helping to protect me. And if you do, you will be sorely disappointed!!

Instead of talking about characterizations in articles that talk about the new policy, how about taking the refreshing step of actually looking at the new Youtube guideline:

“While it might not seem fair to say you can’t show something because of what viewers theoretically might do in response, we draw the line at content that’s intended to incite violence or encourage dangerous, illegal activities that have an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death. This means not posting videos on things like instructional bomb making, ninja assassin training, sniper attacks, videos that train terrorists, or tips on illegal street racing. Any depictions like these should be educational or documentary and shouldn’t be designed to help or encourage others to imitate them.”

First, even though the First Amendment doesn’t apply to Youtube’s policies, if it did, this would very likely not run afoul of it in the least.

Second, it’s much narrower than how it’s being depicted in blog posts (including Techdirt’s): it is directed at content that incites, encourages or helps others to engage in dangerous acts that pose an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death.

There is also a second new policy statement that, from a First Amendment standpoint, I do find more troubling:

“‘Hate speech'” refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.”

Even though the First Amendment does not apply to Youtube, I think this gives it too much discretion to decide what is or is not acceptable speech, and it doesn’t seem very narrowly tailored to address the specific issue of terrorist support.

Moreover, there are other ways to get at speech intended to support terrorism, and the definition in the federal Anti-Terrorism Act, or the one used in the Immigration and Nationalities Act, or the one used in FISA, just to name three examples, would have provided a much narrower basis for evaluating content. If a video for instance did not openly incite others to commit violent acts, but solicited financial support for a known terrorist organization, that is already a felony offense under US law, and Youtube would have ample justification to ban that sort of content from its site.

As the terrorists are not American Citizens nor posting their videos from computers in America then they cannot be protected by the Right to Free Speech as the American laws apply. If it does then anyone in the world can be arrested for any American crime even it is legal in the country where the “crime” was commited.

I don’t generally get my opinion from political commentators, but I was sorta indifferent towards this until radio broadcaster Phil Hendrie said something along the lines of these videos have actually inspired Americans to join the military or to be awakened to the true savagery of terrorism, and are more partiotic or at least more appreciative of the liberties of the United States.

I’d never given it much thought, but to keep any information from people, good or bad is a strike against truth, and ultimately Lieberman did alot more damage than good.

I had never had a desire to see a hostage beheading video, but the idea of knowing that it was out there really was enough for me to know that these are savage animals who, if Americans can see them for what they are, the good senator Lieberman has nothing to worry about.

Ultimately, it’s youtube’s policy, and they are the ones who caved. But it brings up the interesting question…if terrorsts can’t post recruitment videos, that means we’re all safe from any Westboro Baptist propaganda on there too, right?

Lets face it, youtube is where people who don’t know any better watch videos on the net. I don’t really care if they pull all the violent stuff… liveleak etc… are WAY batter anyway.

Who decides what is an extremist cause? If we let Republicans decide then any pro-democrat videos would be considered extreme and most likely the opposite would be true as well. Scarier is the idea that somebody posting a video questioning the acts of a politician or a political group could be labeled ‘extremist’ regardless of the level of truth. But what do you expect from Lieberman, he has always been anti-free-speech just take a look at his record (remember the 90’s and his anti-video-game rampage).