اشتباكات بجنوب الأردن على خلفية الانتخابات

YouTube removes 'al-Qaeda videos'

Website says it is removing speeches by Anwar al-Awlaki following complaints from UK and US officials.

04 Nov 2010

YouTube, the video-sharing website has begun removing clips of speeches by an American-born Yemeni religious leader who US authorities believe is a leading figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The move by YouTube, first reported by the New York Times newspaper on Wednesday, comes after a "British official" and a US politician put pressure on the Google-owned website.

Anthony Weiner, a congressman from New York, sent YouTube a letter last week calling al-Awlaki the "bin Laden of the internet," referring to Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda founder.

Weiner listed hundreds of al-Awlaki's videos that appear on YouTube, writing: "There is no reason we should give killers like al-Awlaki access to one of the world's largest bully pulpits so they can inspire more violent acts within our borders, or anywhere else in the world."

Al-Awlaki appears in more than 700 videos which have received a combined 3.5 million views, Weiner wrote.

A YouTube spokeswoman told the Times that the site had removed videos that violated guidelines against showing "dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech, and incitement to commit violent acts", or that came from accounts "registered by a member of a designated foreign terrorist organization" or used to promote such a group's interests.

But as of Thursday, there were still hundreds of videos featuring speeches by al-Awlaki on YouTube.

Al-Awlaki gained US media attention after a Muslim army major who had communicated with the cleric shot to death 13 people and wounded 30 others at the Fort Hood military base in Texas.

Al-Awlaki also reportedly had contact with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man who attempted to blow up a passenger airplane over the US on December 25.

In May, a woman in Britain who had reportedly watched dozens of hours of al-Awlaki's videos on YouTube was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a British politician, The Times said.

Weiner said YouTube's first response to his letter had been merely "bureaucratic", but that the company took his request more seriously after a plot was uncovered to send two explosives hidden in parcels bound from Yemen to the US.

Barack Obama, the US president, linked the plot - thought to be an attempt to blow up the airplanes the parcels were carried on mid-flight - to AQAP.

Source: Al-Jazeera.
Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/11/2010114204058597893.html.

Turkey lifts YouTube ban after more than 2 years

Sat Oct 30

ISTANBUL – Turkey said Saturday that it was lifting a ban on YouTube more than two years after it blocked access to the site because of videos deemed insulting to the country's founder.

Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, who is in charge of Internet issues, said the government has been in touch with Google, which owns YouTube. There was no longer any reason to ban the video-sharing site, he said, as the offending videos had been removed.

"In the end, common sense prevailed. The reasons for the YouTube ban do not exist anymore," Yildirim said.

"The ban has been removed," Yildirim said on NTV television. "But we didn't get here easily, we have been through a lot in the process. I hope that they have also learned from this experience and the same thing will not happen again. YouTube will hopefully carry out its organization in Turkey within the limits of law in the future."

Turkey's telecommunications authority banned access to YouTube in May 2008 after users complained that some videos insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the country in 1923. It is a crime in Turkey to insult Ataturk. The country has implemented reforms as part of a bid to join the European Union, but still faces questions about its record on free expression.

The country began blocking access to websites in 2007, after parliament adopted a law against cyber crime in an effort to curb child porn, prevent the dissemination of terrorist propaganda and stamp out illegal gambling.

More than 6,000 sites have been banned in Turkey according to Engelli Web, a site that monitors blocked pages.

SCANDAL. YouTube could not bear Dokku Umarov

From the evening of March 31 and till noon of April 5, about 650 thousand people saw the video statement by the Caucasus Emirate's Emir Dokku Umarov on the YouTube. The administration of YouTube could not bear it and removed the video.

Obviously, the YouTube decided that this is too much when the topic of Russian crimes in the Caucasus and the reasons of Moscow blasts became more popular than most spectacular presentations of Hollywood stars and video gossips about the private life of Western high society.

It should be noted that the YouTube is being increasingly engaged in scandals removing videos, which are disliked by this or that regime in different countries.

The champion here is, of course, is Russia, which reacts very sensitively to any piece of truth about its crimes. Just remember how the Kremlin fell in hysterics, demanding from the UN to remove all references to secret tortures prisoners in occupied Chechnya from a report by the UN special commission.

On the request of Moscow, the YouTube previously removed more than 300 clips from the Kavkaz Center, motivating its actions with "inappropriate content", i.e. telling the truth about Moscow crimes is inappropriate for the YouTube.

Curiously, the administration of the YouTube removed not only the clip, uploaded by the KC, but all the videos with the Emir Dokku Umarov's statement uploaded by other users.

It is to be mentioned that, taking into account the number of viewings of the statement by Dokku Umarov in other accounts of the YouTube, the total number of people who watched this video exceeded 800,000 in 4 days. This has become a kind of a record for the YouTube.

Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2010/04/05/11793.shtml.

Google to insert captions on YouTube

San Francisco - Google is to add automatic captions to the tens of millions of English-language videos it hosts on YouTube, the web search giant said Friday. The move will make the videos more accessible to deaf viewers but will also help Google index the content and supply relevant ads alongside it, analysts said. Google has been experimenting with the automated captions for several months with a handful of high profile partners like the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and National Geographic. All other captions on YouTube videos were provided by the videos' producers.

Google has been working on speech recognition technology for some five years, and uses the technology to transcribe audio voice mails through its Google Voice service, and to provide spoken Web searches from smart phones.

However, engineers warned that the technology is far from perfect and that the machine translations are sure to contain mistakes.

"We know it's not perfect, and sometimes it will be funny," said Google engineer Ken Harrenstien, who is deaf. "But it's better than nothing."

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/312720,google-to-insert-captions-on-youtube.html.

Teenagers should be better protected on social networks, EU says

Brussels - The privacy of underage users should be better protected by social networking websites, the European Commission urged Monday, on the eve of the so-called Safer Internet Day. Last year the commission - the EU's executive - got 20 web companies, including industry leaders such as Facebook, Google-MySpace and Yahoo, to sign up to a charter promoting safer internet use, especially for minors.

A year on, it found that just 40 per cent of them "make profiles of under-18 users visible only to their friends by default and only one third replied to user reports asking for help," a press release released Monday explained.

"I expect all companies to do more. Minors' profiles need to be set to private by default and questions or abuse reports have to receive quick and appropriate responses. The internet is now vital to our children, and it is the responsibility of all to make it safe", stressed the EU's outgoing commissioner for Media, Viviane Reding.

YouTube is one of the websites that do not respect recommendations on teenage privacy, according to a fact sheet supplied by the commission.

The others negative examples are Arto, Bebo, Dailymotion, Hyves, Xbox Live, Nasza-klaza.pl, Netlog, Piczo, Ratee, Skyrock, VZnet, IRC Galleria and Zap.lu.

Facebook escapes criticism on this front. However, it is not among the 14 websites out of 25 surveyed that provide safety tips for minors that "is both easy to find and easy to understand", the commission's fact sheet warned.

The Safer Internet Day is set to be celebrated on Tuesday in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Reding, as well as incoming commissioner for Digital technologies, are scheduled to attend.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/308133,teenagers-should-be-better-protected-on-social-networks-eu-says.html.