Videos Promoting Terrorism Deleted From YouTube

Google said that it has detached more than 600 videos form YouTube which were supposedly encouraging terrorism in the second half of 2011. The request made by the UK police, as they consider these videos malicious while promoting terrorism.

In addition, Google also terminated account of five users who were deliberately involved in uploading these types of videos.

Details came out in Google’s recent Transparency Report which unveils requests by international authorities to eradicate videos.  However, Google said that it had refused to take action on several other requests from other states. The company said that by removing these videos it will be against the law of freedom of speech. But, the company did act in many other cases, which include videos in Thailand that allegedly offended its monarchy.

Google expresses its deep concern regarding the high number of request for removal of videos.

Dorothy Chou, who is Google’s senior policy analyst, as saying: “It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect – Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.”

“For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors,” she added.

“In Poland, we received a request from the Agency for Enterprise Development to remove links to a site that criticised it.

“We didn’t comply with either of these requests,” she said.

Some of the videos that Google refused to remove from YouTube included a request that come from Canadian Officials. The authorities asked Google to remove the video of Canadian citizen, who was intentionally abusing his passport. Another request came from Pakistan’s Ministry of Information Technology to remove malicious videos against their senior politicians and Army officials.