YouTube has refused a request from U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) to remove all videos sponsored by terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, contending that most of them don’t violate its community guidelines.
Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Monday called on the Google Inc. subsidiary to remove video content produced by terrorist organizations that showed assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, “incendiary” speeches and other material intended to “encourage violence against the West.”
“Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers, and provide weapons training,” Lieberman said in a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive, and amplified voice, despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law enforcement and intelligence communities.”
In the letter, Lieberman noted that while YouTube posts community guidelines for its users, it does not appear that the company follows the guidelines. For example, he noted that despite rules that prohibit gratuitous violence on the site, there are videos of Al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. forces in which some soldiers are killed or injured.
When contacted, Google pointed to a YouTube blog post that said the company has removed some of the videos cited by Lieberman, primarily because they depicted gratuitous violence, advocated violence or used hate speech. However, the post also noted that most of the videos in question remain on the site “because they do not violate our community guidelines.”
“Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day,” the YouTube blog post said. “Because it is not possible to pre-screen this much content, we have developed an innovative and reliable community policing system that involves our users in helping us enforce YouTube’s standards. Millions of users report potential violations of our community guidelines.”
YouTube went on to say that it encourages free speech and defends the right of its users to express unpopular points of view
“We believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds,” the company said. “Of course, users are always free to express their disagreement with a particular video on the site, by leaving comments or their own response video. That debate is healthy.”
Mark Hopkins, a blogger for Mashable, noted that YouTube has been “capricious and arbitrary” in deciding what content promotes hate speech or violence and should be removed. For example, he pointed out that YouTube took down a video showing victims of a Muslim terrorist attack, but allowed videos of homeless people who were paid to beat each other. A video of clothed females in Hong Kong with derogatory music towards women being played in the background was removed, while a video of a strip tease with nudity was allowed to remain on the site, he noted.
“[Lieberman's] primary concerns weren’t the usual suspects when you think of the things that American politicians find objectionable (rap music, graphic portrayals of violence, Grand Theft Auto and Janet Jackson’s nipple),” Hopkins noted.
Instead Lieberman brought up a topic that YouTube should be called on — allowing itself to be a participant in the dissemination of propaganda videos produced by Islamic terrorist organizations, Hopkins said. “If YouTube can spend millions enforcing DMCA and piracy concerns, they can take a few minutes and respond to valid citizen complaints against usage of the system to promote terrorist organizations,” he added.
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Napster Inc., the digital music service, on Tuesday opened the world’s biggest MP3 download store with more than 6 million songs in a direct challenge to Apple Inc’s iTunes store.
The new Web-based music store will have digital songs from all major music labels as well as thousands of independent labels. The MP3-format songs will be compatible with the vast majority of digital media devices and mobile phones including Apple’s popular iPod as well as its iPhone.
Before now Napster has focused on selling all-you-can-eat monthly streaming music subscription packages but has struggled to win over the majority of fans who want to be able to transfer songs they like on to a portable device such as the market-leading iPod.
The new Napster service tries to take on Apple’s dominance in digital music by offering fans more songs without copy protection or digital rights management (DRM). Most of the six million songs on the iTunes Music store are available with Fairplay DRM, which prevents the songs from being played on most portable players other than the iPod.
Major labels in particular had previously been reluctant to allow online retailers to sell their songs without protection as a way to avoid piracy. As the industry outlook gets tougher more executives are willing to experiment or take a risk.
“We’re now moving from under the DRM cloud,” said Chris Gorog, Napster chief executive. “Now consumers can use Napster with any device,” he added.
Most songs on the service will be available for 99 cents each and $9.95 an album.
Though Napster will be hoping to take on iTunes it will try to do so by being compatible with Apple’s service. According to executives, MP3 songs bought on the Napster Web-based service will be automatically synched into a user’s existing iTunes music library if they use that library.
The success of iTunes, which accounts for more than 70 percent of all digital music sales in the U.S. has been a double-edged sword for the music industry.
iTunes has been widely acknowledged by music industry watchers as playing the lead role in developing the legal and commercially viable digital music sector. But in the last year, music executives at major labels have worried that iTunes’ dominant position might be hampering the expansion of the nascent market.
iTunes said last month it had overtaken Wal-Mart to become the biggest retailer of music in the U.S with more than 4 billion songs sold since launch in 2003.
But concerns have mounted in the music industry as CDs sales have dropped faster than expected while the growth of digital music sales is yet to make up for the shortfall.
Music industry executives have recently been encouraging new entrants to the digital music business such as online retailer Amazon.com and News Corp’s social networking site MySpace.
This makes Napster the latest name to join the ranks of recent music industry partners who might help tip the balance of power back from Apple in favor of the major labels.
Gorog said he still believes that despite the success of Apple’s download service Napster will still support its subscription service which will grow as people become more aware of it.
“We believe ultimately that consumers will be moving to an unlimited music model,” said Gorog.
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It’s no secret that Apple Inc. has been on a hardware tear. In the last year alone, there has been a flurry of developments: The company branched into the mobile phone arena with the iPhone. It reinvented the mp3 player with the introduction of the iPod Touch. It worked its way into living rooms with an updated Apple TV.
But Apple is now exploring another hardware technology that has the potential to realign a multibillion dollar industry.
Apple has once again got an itch for gaming.
This isn’t necessarily a new frontier. Fans of the Cupertino-based company may recall how a Steve Jobs-less Apple entered the console gaming fray in 1996 with the troubled Pippin. At best, the Pippin ended up being a costly lesson. At worst, it served as a stinging footnote to the company’s strained relationship with gamers.
Fast forward to the present — the company has enjoyed a string of hardware and software hits and has disrupted the music and mobile phone industries soon after entering them. Today’s Apple certainly has the means to release another console, but let’s face it — a rehashed Pippin would be a huge gamble, considering the established relationships and competition represented by Sony’s PlayStation3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii.
This doesn’t mean that Apple has abandoned ways to break into the gaming market with its desktop hardware. A beefed-up iMac offers an interesting possibility. Adding horsepower to the iMac line isn’t exactly new for Cupertino, but with an overclocked Intel CPU and an nVIDIA 8800M GTS under the hood, the new iMac could easily pass for a leading gaming rig — at least, if there were more developers creating games designed to run on it and OS X.
It seems much more likely that Jobs and Co. may be following a different path to gaming success — domination of the mobile gaming market.
A trademark extension filed last February with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is one of the strategy’s biggest tells. The filing extends Apple’s trademark in regards to:
“Toys, games and playthings, namely, hand-held units for playing electronic games; hand-held units for playing video games; stand alone video game machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with television receivers only; LCD game machines; electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games.”
Skeptics could easily dismiss this as Apple casting a wide net for future expansion, but a swift call to action seems more likely. Not only are executives well aware of the strong interest in gaming among Mac users (and vendors), but also new conditions exist for gaming to be pushed to the forefront in the Apple hardware and software ecosystem. The faltering company behind the Pippin now dominates several hardware segments, which makes a huge difference in launching a new (and potentially related) product. The problems that the Pippin faced – such as the development and marketing costs associated with an unproven device – would be negated by a gaming platform tied into Apple’s market-dominating and innovative mobile devices.
And here’s the really sneaky part – the iPod Touch and the iPhone are already fully capable of playing games. Apple highlighted this home-court advantage with the recent release of the SDK for the iPhone/iPod Touch. By doing so, Apple let a community of eager third-party developers tackle designing games like “Spore” as well as casual games for its devices that utilize innovative features such as the multitouch screen and motion-sensing accelerometer. Along with all of the development tools necessary for building applications, developers will have the ability to upload and sell their creations through the iPhone App store (naturally, Apple will take a cut).
Consumers are already ga-ga over Apple’s mobile devices to begin with, so whether they should be re-imagined as gaming gadgets is more of a marketing issue. But with the developer community in a tizzy to create the next great Apple-friendly game, it’s only a matter of time before Cupertino announces that it’s ready to connect the dots. Don’t be too surprised if it ends up being Steve’s “one more thing” at next year’s Macworld.
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