Date: Thursday, April 3, 2008
YouTube ‘sorry’ over Rape Video
Google has apologised after a video that reportedly showed a woman being gang raped was watched hundreds of times on its YouTube site. It is thought that the three-minute film was viewed over 600 times before it was removed under the site’s graphic content policy.
The film allegedly showed a 25-year-old mother being sexually assaulted by three boys, after having her drink spiked. Google was forced to explain their failure to remove the video quickly enough to a Culture, Media and Sport committee in the House of Commons. At the hearing, Kent Walker, general counsel for the search engine giant, admitted that the video’s appearance on the site was “clearly a mistake.”
The incident has led to increased calls for tighter restrictions on the site. However, Mr Walker resisted these pleas and explained that screening all videos on the channel would be inefficient, as well as go against the spirit of the internet. 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.” However, he did tell the committee that “a huge amount of material” was already screened on the site, and that 50% of all offensive flagged videos were removed within half an hour. He said: “Once flagged, more than 50 per cent is removed within half an hour; a large majority is removed within an hour.”
However, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmathen East and Dinefwr Adam Price was just one of the many MPs who rejected Mr Walker’s defence. He said that his case was “deeply objectionable” and told Mr Walker that YouTube’s failure to delete the alleged rape video quickly enough “surely shows your system is completely inadequate.”
Source:
The Times
Daily Telegraph
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