Video sharing web site YouTube has been banned in 1,600 government schools in the state of Victoria, Australia.

Schools in the state have been filtering what sites are available to students for a long time and now have added YouTube to the list of blocked sites, says Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan.

“All students have the right to learn in a safe and supportive learning environment — this includes making students’ experience of the virtual world of learning as safe and productive as possible,” she said.

Last year a video was uploaded of a group of boys assaulting a 17 year old girl in outer Melbourne. The male students put the video up themselves, and have now caused the ban.

Apparently YouTube is promoting ‘cyber-bullying’. Obviously this is your standard educational knee-jerk reaction to an incident that has little to do with online video publishing.

Although no blame has been issued to YouTube directly, the State and it’s schools are threatened in some way. But why? Let’s take a look at another incident that occurred at a concert in Hamilton, Canada, last December when a man was murdered in a parking lot after the show.

Only after video footage of the incident appeared on YouTube did the attacker turn himself in. The video of George Gallow entering the club was viewed over 30,000 times and he was identified as a suspect.

Gallow then approached Hamilton police and was charged. YouTube actually assisted in an arrest for a murder.

So why is it, in the case of the assault in Victoria, that the same technology is seen as a promotion of the violence itself and not an aid to prosecute? Because the assailants themselves published the video?

Let’s look at the real problem of teenage assault and not the made up problem of ‘cyber-bullying’.

Related:

Entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 7:46 pm under YouTube.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Craig Childs.
Stumble It!