Truth Outing

I was wondering when the other shoe would drop on the You Tube rape scandal. A video sat on the internet for three months, showing a British woman being gang raped by a group of teens. She told police that she had been drugged, and that the rape took place in front of her two small children.

Someone finally got around to seeing the video and freaking out about it. You Tube removed the clip. In the fallout, there were the predictable demands that You Tube vet all of their videos before allowing them to be posted, and Google's lawyer ended up in front of the Commons defending the site.

The lawyer, Kent Walker, said that it was impossible to vet all of the videos posted. Not only was it a logistical nightmare, but it would go against the spirit of You Tube. He also said he could not disclose how many people You Tube had monitoring the thousands of videos that that pour onto the site every day.

Upon hearing this, an MP asked Walker if he knew how absurd he sounded. Another MP, Adam Price, declared that no person could view the rape material without knowing it for what it was.

To which I say, "Not so fast, bonehead."

I see all kinds of stuff on the net, and a lot of it is labeled "fake" by people that see it. Other people respond with, "No, man, it's real." And the next guy says, "No, totally fake." And another guy says, "It's real, look at the horns, it's a real Martian antelope, I swear."

That is the world of the internet, and it is great.

"But Sean," you say, "this is rape."

Oh? Shortly after the MP called Kent Walker absurd, the rape victim was exposed as a liar. It wasn't rape. All charges against the "rapists" have been dropped. The woman herself has now been charged with having sex with a minor and perverting the course of justice.

People that want the internet and You Tube monitored don't get it: You Tube, like all sites, is already monitored. It is monitored by the people that surf the site. Every time I log onto You Tube and watch a clip, I have the option of flagging the clip for any reason whatsoever. If a clip receives enough flags, someone at You Tube looks at it. If they find it out of bounds, they remove it. If I log onto a site that does not have a flagging option, and I think I see an actual crime committed, I can use the telephone.

Google's lawyer is absolutely correct in saying that vetting the videos would go against the spirit of the site. The site is called "You Tube," not, "You-After-Vetting Tube."

It all comes down to the same old garbage that do-gooders throw us every time: protecting people (usually children) from objectionable material.

Well, define "objectionable." Does that mean sex only, and if so, what kind of sex? Is kissing okay, but not anal porn? How about foul language? You Tube is loaded with clips of people saying all kinds of things. Is "damn" a bad word? How about "shit" or "piss"? If sex is taboo, how about religion and politics? And which kind of politics?

On You Tube, it is the people at large that decide whether a clip is objectionable or not, and it is this aspect of the internet that drives do-gooders and politicians crazy. They have no control over people's views, and it disturbs them greatly that someone might speak their mind without passing through their screening tests.

For the last time, keep your hands off my internet. It is the ultimate form of free speech, it belongs to all people, and it is the people that will decide its fate.

Do-gooders and politicians crack me up. Their lives are so terribly lame and inconsequential. Imagine them, lying awake at night, worrying that some crackpot somewhere is uploading something to the internet. Then they surf the net for hours, looking for the crackpot, hoping to find him and prosecute him for some imagined crime or other.

I don't need your protection. Turn off your internet, get laid for the first time in a decade, and piss off.