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| Courtesy of Fox News |
After attending Deepah Kumar's presentation, the question about the relevance of Youtube allowing the post of "Innocense of Muslism" still resided in my mind. Of course, this was immediatly justified as the right to the free speech. However, to what extent can a free speech go? When Middle Eastern countries demanded Youtube to block this video, their response was that they weren't against free speech as long as it wasn't "insulting," "damaging," etc. In addition, the Russian government also has asked for the material to be blocked. They threatened to completely block Youtube services across the country if their demands weren't met. After reading articles for this week, it is clear that the dilema of people freely expressing their opinions on the internet and the political impact exists. How "freely" can we express our opinions and to what extenct can the government intervene? In response to "ban requests," a Youtube representative told BBC:
"We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions. This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere."
However, Rachel Whetstone, Google's director of global communications, said in her blog post that Google was not "the arbiter of what does and does not appear on the web." (BBC News)
You can read the full article
here. Do you think "explicit," "extremist," material should be banned (as are children pornography sites) or should the internet be the "sphere" where the rights to the free speech are truly constituted?
You definitely raise the controversial question that we have been indirectly asked our entire Internet lives. Actually, it is not until situations like these, of extremism, occur that I really reflect on this idea. As Deepa alluded to regarding the youtube video -- this was not the sole cause of the riots, it was moreso the final straw after years of constantly being beat down. Regarding the censorship of the Internet (even when wrong, hurtful, and explicit) I cannot justify banning material. What is more bothersome to me is that people are actually having such thoughts. The "problem" is not the Internet in my opinion, it is ignorance, naivety, and close mindedness of groups of people. In a sense, the extreme views on the Internet open our eyes and remind us that VERY REAL problems still exist if people are thinking in this way. We should focus on the deeper issues and not do this by just putting a bandaid over certain areas of the Internet.
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