Prager University Sues YouTube/Google

WALL STREET JOURNAL via AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

….The suit heightens a debate over tech companies’ increasing influence on public opinion and how they should police content on their sites. With the internet enabling the spread of misinformation, hate speech and foreign propaganda—especially around the 2016 U.S. election—politicians, academics and the media are increasing scrutiny on the role a handful of tech giants play in modern society.

Since last year, more than three dozen PragerU videos—on subjects including the Korean War and Israel and Palestine—have been restricted by YouTube. As a result, those who use YouTube in “restricted mode,” including students at some universities and children whose parents have put parental control filters in place, are prevented from seeing the videos; all potential ad revenue from the videos is also cut off…..

BREITBART:

PragerU, the conservative digital media organization from Dennis Prager, is suing YouTube and its parent Google over alleged censorship of their videos.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday, “says YouTube’s more than 30 million visitors a day make the site so elemental to free speech in the digital age that it should be treated as a public forum.”

“The suit argues the site must use the ‘laws governing free speech,’ not its own discretion, to make decisions about what to censor,” they reported, adding that PragerU “alleges that by limiting access to some of its videos without clear criteria YouTube is infringing on PragerU’s First Amendment rights.”

YouTube has repeatedly censored PragerU on their platform, labeling political videos as “restricted” adult content and even removing a video of “a Muslim man describing how he was raised to be anti-Semitic,” branding the video as “hate speech.”….

Here is more from POLITISTICK:

…PragerU isn’t the only company that has been hit by YouTube’s demonetization censorship. Big time YouTube stars like Dave Rubin and Stephen Crowder — and many other (if not all conservatives) have also been affected.

We can attest to experiencing the exact same issue as other conservative YouTube users on our own YouTube channel. Nearly every video we clip, even of the President of the United States speaking, are flagged as “Not Appropriate for All Advertisers,” especially when they make progressive leftist Democrats look bad.

You can appeal the demonetization, but only after the video gets at least 1,000 views will they review the decision with a human reviewer. This adversely effects smaller YouTube users and start-ups

YouTube Bias (BigPeace Import)

The below is about the above video, take note that the following is from Big Peace:

Here’s an update on Youtube’s removal of Latma-TV’s English-subtitled “We Con The World” video – the parody of the politically correct posturing in the original “We Are The World” song. The Latma video parodied the singers as  “Flotilla terrorists” singing about their propaganda tactics. The original English-subtitled video had over 3 million hits, before Youtube removed it due to a complaint of copyright violation on behalf of Warner/Chappell Music Inc. Versions with Hebrew subtitles can still be seen at Latma-TV channel here and within the Latma-TV weekly newscast.

The URLs of the removed videos were:

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNVeu-Iya34
  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGG_osOoVg
  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ66qEl-fqo
  4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KUcv452KbU

When Youtube removed the links to the English-subtitled video, they effectively stopped the then 3-million plus viral distribution just as it was  expanding, eliminating potentially millions of other views (see the classic analysis on viral marketing projections by Alan L. Montgomery of Carnegie Mellon University).

Latma-TV  sent a formal request to Youtube to put the parody video “We Con the World” back up. The producers received an email back on June 18, stating the video would be back up in 10-14 business days. July 9 will be “day 14,” so the deadline is near for Youtube’s staff to make the judgment that the English-subtitled video was a legitimate parody – and therefore protected under the “Fair Use” provision in the US copyright law.

Watch this space for updates as we count down to July 9.

Meanwhile – as a comparison – you can view two satirical parodies, both from the Left’s perspective, of the “We Are The World” song that were NOT  removed from Youtube.