BlogHer - web - Comments

YouTube Should Be Monitoring

Megan Smith — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 07:26:46 -0500

Hi Nikoli,

I'm not blaming YouTube for stupid girls getting into fights and posting the videos. I am blaming them for leaving those videos up.

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

Dont blame youtube

Nikoli747 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:25:35 -0500

now a days too many people/parents look for excuses to blame peoples stupididty on. If these girls get into a fight and post it on youtbe it is not youtubes fault, its not televsions fault, its not becasue of video games...its because some stupid girls chose to make a bad decesion and they should be punished accordingly.We need to stop blaming third parties to try and justify peoples immature actions.

Oh No!

Just4Moi — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:36:03 -0500

Olive was very impressive. I was watching some of her videos this morning. How amazing that she had such vivid recall on events that occurred over 100 years ago.

Seriously, I can't remember what I did last week.

Robyn

Oh no!

Denise — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:06:00 -0500

I've spent a lot of time reading about Olive, watching videos of her and reading her blog. Love her. I'm sorry to hear she's gone.

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager

Flamingo House Happenings

Video Games Are A Whole Other Animal

Megan Smith — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:00:06 -0500

Hi Kim,

Thank you.

I read the excerpt you suggested and like you said it has some very helpful suggestions for parents with kids who like video games.

Welcome to the 21st century...sigh.

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute
Video Runway

About violent video games

Kim Pearson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:06:41 -0500

First, Megan -- kudos on a great post!

Second, I share your concern about videogames such as "Bully," produced by the same lovely people responsible for the Grand Theft Auto series. In that context, I thought that this excerpt from the book, Grand Theft Childhood, by the Co-directors of the Center for Mental Health and Media, was really interesting. It has suggestions to help parents of children who are drawn to violent videogames. I think that the suggestions might also be applied to this situation.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Megan

lilmommythatcould — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:21:54 -0500

with an SOS pad.

For More On Kids And Violence

Megan Smith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:41:15 -0500

I should point out, Laina's recent post "What Is Happening To Our Kids?" Increasing Violence Among Young Women.

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute
Video Runway

As they say here "AY OH!"

JenInShanghai — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:38:28 -0500

That is very disturbing.

It would be an interesting study to see if violence among youth has increased since the onset of "Reality TV". Certain violence on TV has traditionally been tolerable because you know they are actors playing a part. This has been what I rely on when watching TV with my kids. I am constantly explaining that "they are just pretending!"

Since the explosion of "Reality" (I use that term loosely) TV I think many kids today don't really know the difference. Especially if they are not in a situation where their TV/Internet usage is monitored. It mostly boils down to parents actually parenting, but I have to think that YouTube needs to bear some of the responsibility for allowing such violence to be posted.

'nuff said.

Thanks again for a great post Megan!

The Legal Questions Are Beyond Me

Megan Smith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:32:06 -0500

Hi Jill,

Thanks so much for the kind words, and the link.

Legally speaking, I was especially interested in this quote from the AP article I sited above:

From a legal standpoint, YouTube and other online service providers
are largely exempt from liability because of a 1996 anti-pornography
law. One provision says Internet service providers are not considered
publishers simply because they retransmit information provided by their
users or other sources.

Federal courts have applied that broadly
to cover not just Internet access providers, but also video-sharing
sites, message boards and other online services.

My legal knowledge is severely limited, but I was surprised by the fact that YouTube and other sites are "largely exempt." That to me says, nothing much will change unless the YouTube community increases pressure on the site to police itself. And that includes pressure on Google as well.

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute
Video Runway

Rape and Child Pornography

Megan Smith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:20:36 -0500

Hi Jen,

Regarding rape and child pornography, YouTube's Community Guidelines say the following:

YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this
describes your video, even if it's a video of yourself, don't post it
on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement
and we report child exploitation. Please read our Safety Tips and stay
safe on YouTube.

When I did a search for "child pornography" what I got was at least ten pages of stories and reports about or against child pornography. I only looked through a sampling of videos but I didn't see anything that looked like it could be considered child pornography.

However, when I did a search for "rape" several pages of rapes scenes came up. Some were from movies, some promised "date rape."

I have to be honest with you on this one, after glancing at the
first few videos and flagging a couple as "physical attacks" I couldn't
look at anymore.

What I also found disturbing was only a couple
of the ones I saw were flagged with a "this video or group may contain
content that is inappropriate" message.

Once again, to be fair, there were videos listed under "rape" with people speaking out against rape and violence.

Don't get me wrong, I think YouTube is a great site and a real breakthrough in modern technology and how people communicate with each other. I just think they need to do more to clean up some of the crap.

Excuse me while I now go take a shower.

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute
Video Runway

Thanks for Weighing In

Megan Smith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:18:52 -0500

Hi Claudine and Sue,

I appreciate your weighing in on this very important issue.

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute
Video Runway

Outstanding post

Jill Miller Zimon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:18:43 -0500

Wow, Megan, you put so much into this - thank you thank you thank you for answering a lot of basic and then deeper questions.

Of course, there are still more, aren't there!? It's endless, it feels sometimes.

I'd like to know what some of the women in the media groups are doing if anything, or women in tech, and women in law. Not to be outright sexist, but I'd be curious to know if women lawyers who are familiar both with intellectual property law, media law AND women and aggression feel the same as the lawyer quoted by the AP. (these crossovers of issues is one reason I studied law and social work! I love this stuff - but of course, I hate it, if you know what I mean!)

The reason I'd try to seek someone out (NOT suggesting you or even me - just saying in general) is because I went to an excellent day-long conference that featured James Garbarino. He's really the pre-eminent authority on kids and violence, from every angle, and has been studying it for decades. And he discusses the intersections of all these areas in his work.

Anyway - a few thoughts:

1. echoing Dagny, why do the kids have the cellphones? do they really have to have the cellphones that can videotape? have we (parents) started to use them without enough thought or supervision?

2. YouTube is owned by Google now isn't it? Let's be real - Google is engaged in ~~several very questionable practices~~ at least two questionable practices that I can think of right off the top of my head - how they conduct work in China as Jen mentions and other countries, letting governments dictate access and the library project they are doing with Harvard and many other universities for millions of dollars (of cost to Google) but without regard to copyright (listen here to a recent NPR piece on the issues) - don't know if others have kept up on that.

Why are we not holding the corporations to a higher standard?

3. What Claudine said - we shouldn't be glorifying violence. Where I see the sticky point is that for how many decades has that been done in other "acceptable" spaces - the military, comic books and so on. So is it more about helping enforce the distinctions in the use of force and violence, or never allowing it? This is of course an ages-old question, I think.

Again - thanks for a fantastic post - I'm going to link to it!

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

The Prison Litmus Test

Megan Smith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:58:30 -0500

I like it!

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute
Video Runway

Good Rule of Thumb for You Tube

lilmommythatcould — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:14:16 -0500

I am sure some will argue some fights are "fake" like wrestling, used to entertain-which I never understood. These above fights are just plain sick and to have little compassion for the victim leaves me shaking my head.

If it can get you tossed in prision maybe it shouldn't be shown on Youtube.