British lawmakers watching YouTube
By John Lister
British politicians have called for YouTube to find a better system for vetting inappropriate content – though they’ve acknowledged that manually checking every clip before it appears would be unworkable.
The call comes in a report by the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, the UK equivalent to a Senate sub-committee.
The major objection involved an apparent industry standard by which video sites aim to remove footage of child abuse within 24 hours. The politicians said they were “shocked” that it could take so long.
The committee strongly criticised YouTube for allowing users to upload videos without having to read (or at least tick a box to claim they had read) the site’s guidelines on inappropriate material.
Bizarrely the politicians also questioned the absence of a watershed, similar to the country’s television regulations which block material unsuitable for children being broadcast before 9pm. Presumably they think no child ever uses a computer unsupervised at night time, and that none of them have ever figured out how to change their time zone settings.
YouTube gave evidence to the committee and agreed to explore technology-based solutions such as scanning descriptions and file titles to identify clips which are most likely to contain unsuitable material; the idea is that this could make it more practical to manually vet such clips.
The report also noted the work of the Internet Watch Foundation, an official site for reporting potentially illegal online material. The Foundation is adopting a policy of asking internet service providers to block access to overseas sites containing material which would be illegal to host on a UK server.
Reports like this don’t lead to any immediate new laws; they are more a statement of principles. If anything, it looks as if the committee is trying to clarify the level of cooperation they want from internet companies to avoid the need to legislate.
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