Trevelyan
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Well I was going to respond to the thread entitled US Court ruling: Google must provide logs of every Youtube user, but I started thinking about this & it's a bit off topic & maybe should have it's own thread. Apologies if this has been flagged elsewhere.
In April & May of this year there were a series of UK Parliamentary Select Committee meetings discussing Harmful Content on the Internet and in Video Games. I watched alot of it cos it was broadcast on the BBC Parliament news channel. The Select Committee were a group of cross party MP's, & they interviewed a whole host of people & relative big wigs involved with the Internet & Video Games. You may have seen this news link, or one like it, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7314751.stm , about the BBFC getting involved in Video Games classification. Dr Tanya Byron offered her findings to this Select Committee, & you can find all that was said on this website
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmcumeds.htm
Scroll down to Uncorrected Oral Evidence as it stands atm, & you will find links to loads of these meetings & all that was said. This link http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmcumeds/uc353-iv/uc35302.htm is when the man from Youtube/Google came from America! He is Mr Kent Walker from the General Counsel at Google. He got such a grilling! It's the first interview, & discusses Youtube & it's content in depth. It's quite funny how the MP's react! This Select Commitee will probably tell their party's who then vote & try to pass laws (here in the UK) on this subject. Some of them were/are pretty boring, but others were quite fascinating.
Here is an extract where it got particularly heated.
Q316 Chairman: I only raise it because there was a case in the UK very recently of a woman who was gang raped and a video was then uploaded to YouTube. It was viewed by 600 people before it was taken down.
Mr Walker: There were 600 views. We believe it was a much smaller number of individuals, but I am familiar with it. Clearly it was a mistake on our part as a result of human review. Our reviewers review a lot of material and in some cases just simply make a mistake.
Q317 Chairman: You say it was a mistake on your part, but it would have been possible to take it down earlier, would it not?
Mr Walker: The initial flag was reviewed and the individual reviewer, who had reviewed a huge number of materials, did not take it down promptly upon reviewing it. I do not know exactly what happened, but it was a mistake. It was a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal percentage of the material that we are viewing.
Paul Farrelly: That is incredible.
Q318 Adam Price: How could you make a mistake like that? How can you agree with gang rape and not see it for what it is?
Mr Walker: The challenge points out the difficulty with human review and that the answer is not always putting more people on this.
Adam Price: Come on!
Paul Farrelly: Do you know how absurd you are sounding?
Q319 Adam Price: You are defending the indefensible now. People will find this deeply objectionable. You cannot defend that. No reviewer could view that kind of content and not understand it for what it is. Surely that single case is enough for you to realise that your approach is completely inadequate. How can you defend that?
Mr Walker: I do not mean to defend it. Certainly the rape itself and the underlying content are abominable and no one would defend it.
Q320 Adam Price: That is not the point. It is a mistake you made as a company and the system is inadequate, surely.
Mr Walker: No system is perfect. The argument is that in the vast majority of situations we do get to the right answer and we get to the right answer very quickly. The challenge is how to make a better system that continues to honour this area for free speech and does not interpose a company or a business between individuals who are putting up perfectly legitimate, positive, pro-social messages and the small number of people who are abusing the rules and that is the difficulty. There is no question that everybody regrets the fact that this video was on the site for a minute.
:flame: the whole interview is long, but quite interesting (the guy explains how vids on Youtube are flagged & how that all works, & info on Google). & that Dr Tanya Byron followed next.
In April & May of this year there were a series of UK Parliamentary Select Committee meetings discussing Harmful Content on the Internet and in Video Games. I watched alot of it cos it was broadcast on the BBC Parliament news channel. The Select Committee were a group of cross party MP's, & they interviewed a whole host of people & relative big wigs involved with the Internet & Video Games. You may have seen this news link, or one like it, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7314751.stm , about the BBFC getting involved in Video Games classification. Dr Tanya Byron offered her findings to this Select Committee, & you can find all that was said on this website
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmcumeds.htm
Scroll down to Uncorrected Oral Evidence as it stands atm, & you will find links to loads of these meetings & all that was said. This link http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmcumeds/uc353-iv/uc35302.htm is when the man from Youtube/Google came from America! He is Mr Kent Walker from the General Counsel at Google. He got such a grilling! It's the first interview, & discusses Youtube & it's content in depth. It's quite funny how the MP's react! This Select Commitee will probably tell their party's who then vote & try to pass laws (here in the UK) on this subject. Some of them were/are pretty boring, but others were quite fascinating.
Here is an extract where it got particularly heated.
Q316 Chairman: I only raise it because there was a case in the UK very recently of a woman who was gang raped and a video was then uploaded to YouTube. It was viewed by 600 people before it was taken down.
Mr Walker: There were 600 views. We believe it was a much smaller number of individuals, but I am familiar with it. Clearly it was a mistake on our part as a result of human review. Our reviewers review a lot of material and in some cases just simply make a mistake.
Q317 Chairman: You say it was a mistake on your part, but it would have been possible to take it down earlier, would it not?
Mr Walker: The initial flag was reviewed and the individual reviewer, who had reviewed a huge number of materials, did not take it down promptly upon reviewing it. I do not know exactly what happened, but it was a mistake. It was a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal percentage of the material that we are viewing.
Paul Farrelly: That is incredible.
Q318 Adam Price: How could you make a mistake like that? How can you agree with gang rape and not see it for what it is?
Mr Walker: The challenge points out the difficulty with human review and that the answer is not always putting more people on this.
Adam Price: Come on!
Paul Farrelly: Do you know how absurd you are sounding?
Q319 Adam Price: You are defending the indefensible now. People will find this deeply objectionable. You cannot defend that. No reviewer could view that kind of content and not understand it for what it is. Surely that single case is enough for you to realise that your approach is completely inadequate. How can you defend that?
Mr Walker: I do not mean to defend it. Certainly the rape itself and the underlying content are abominable and no one would defend it.
Q320 Adam Price: That is not the point. It is a mistake you made as a company and the system is inadequate, surely.
Mr Walker: No system is perfect. The argument is that in the vast majority of situations we do get to the right answer and we get to the right answer very quickly. The challenge is how to make a better system that continues to honour this area for free speech and does not interpose a company or a business between individuals who are putting up perfectly legitimate, positive, pro-social messages and the small number of people who are abusing the rules and that is the difficulty. There is no question that everybody regrets the fact that this video was on the site for a minute.
:flame: the whole interview is long, but quite interesting (the guy explains how vids on Youtube are flagged & how that all works, & info on Google). & that Dr Tanya Byron followed next.
