Open Letter to YouTube.com
Dear YouTubeFollowing the program panorama screened on Monday 30th July 07 entitled “Child Fight Club”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6921555.stm
which as a reminder, can be viewed again here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6920000/newsid_6923900/6923914.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm&news=1
courtesy of the BBC whom I have asked to keep live as long as possible.
We at affiliateprogramadvice.com, in our personal opinion, find your attitude and policy for allowing people to upload videos of children fighting other children irresponsible and reckless.
The videos are graphic and extreme in violence and we believe does not protect and possibly infringes the human rights of the victims. The victims in most cases are children (minors) whom have laws in place protecting them. We feel that YouTube seems to be aiding and supporting what could be deemed as bordering on facilitating child abuse, we feel there is a very thin line that YouTube are on the margins.We believe the victims of these videos have not given their consent for the videos to be made public and infringes their privacy as their identity is not withheld and can be easily recognised by members of their own community. I question if YouTube are in breach of the UK and USA laws that is a requirement of all websites that harvest data and how that data is used. I believe the law here is ambiguous and warrants further attention.
Under UK criminal law, it is a criminal offence to knowingly participate or withholding information about a crime and could be seen as aiding and abetting which can carry a fine or even a prison sentence. It is clear by the nature of these videos that crimes against children have been committed and the perpetrators of this crime of assault and grievous bodily harm are using YouTube as a vehicle to publicise their crimes.
We believe that you are in breach of your own terms and conditions (guidelines) and have openly admitted that your stance is to allow the general public to dictate what should stay and what should go. Panorama revealed that this system you have in place is woefully inadequate and in some cases, the videos go unchecked. That you appear to have no structured procedures in place.We take issue with a statement made on the radio broadcast about “Happy Slapping” (Victoria Derbyshire on Radio Five Live 9am, where by a founder of YouTube defended their stance about being censored. In this radio broadcast the interviewer asked the question “would YouTube allow a rape video to remain”?, the youtube representative without hesitation replied that YouTube would remove such material immediately. This statement seems very contradictory in light of what the panorama researcher uncovered with regards to your vetting procedures and indicates that there are clear discrepancies.
Under the UK race relations act, it is a criminal offence to advocate, encourage or facilitate racism and would like to draw your attention to one of the assault videos where comments have been left by the general public as highlighted in the panorama program.We believe this again is in breech of your own guide lines. The race relations act protects the rights of the individual “You have the right not to be discriminated against on racial grounds. The Race Relations Act 1976 makes it unlawful to treat a person less favourably than others on racial grounds. These cover grounds of race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), and national or ethnic origin. In practice, most racial discrimination in Britain is against people from ethnic minorities, but people of every background, race, colour and nationality are protected by the law” We argue that YouTube have not gone far enough to protect the rights of the victims.
It does on the surface, appear that YouTube are profiteering from these videos, that have been uploaded by the second party, via third party advertising. Under the UK law it is a criminal offence to profit from crime, where by a crime has been committed. All proceeds from these crimes can be confiscated and assets seized.
It is our moral and legal duty to protect all children regardless!Statement of intent
It is our intent to seek further clarification from organzations that protect the rights of children both in the UK and USA and to make them aware of YouTube’s business practices. It is our intent to contact our UK members of parliament and USA government and bring this subject to their attention and seek a second opinion which is our right.
As we have many advertisers as clients and connections to other advertisers, we will be advising where they have campaigns with youtube running, that their adverts may be shown along side material that may cause offence under the following of race hate, scenes of extreme graphic violence towards children and further to add, I don’t have the confidence in YouTube that their censorship either works or has even had sufficient resources to be able to supervise content.
Yours Sincerely
Jessica Luthi CEO
AffiliateProgramAdvice.com
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