James Delahunty
18 May 2007 19:20
The creators of the infamous video sharing website, YouTube.com, have challenged the Pentagon and the U.S. Military over the assertion that soldiers overseas were using too much bandwidth on the military's network by watching online videos. The Defense Department recently imposed a ban on several websites including YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Studip Videos, IFilm, MTV and Photobucket.
"They said it might be a bandwidth issue, but they created the Internet, so I don't know what the problem is," laughed YouTube Chief Executive Chad Hurley, saying that the company is trying to work with the Pentagon to reverse its course or at least partially lift the ban which affects many soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We'd like to explore what's at issue here and talk about what we can do to sort out what's the issue here," YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan said. Company officials were confused mostly because the block comes just days after the Military launched its own channel on YouTube which it describes as a "boots-on-the-ground" perspective of scenes of combat.
YouTube has always removed videos that contain footage of extreme violence which have included attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. To make this whole situation even more interesting, a new policy implemented in Iraq by the government aims to block news photographers and camera operators from filming bombing scenes, which raises many questions about censorship and the people's right to know what's really going on on the ground.
Acknowledging the new policy change in Iraq, Hurley admits that content showing the regular devastating attacks in Iraq captured by civilians may soon be the only true glimpse into the situation and could perhaps shake YouTube's policies. "We want to protect the (YouTube) community from being exposed to something violent, but at the same time, we want to educate people on what's happening around the world," Hurley said. "It's hard for us."
Chief Technology Officer Steve Chen added: "It does (tick) a lot of people off that we take this video down, but it also (ticks) a lot of people off that these videos stay up."
Source:
Yahoo