September 20th, 2012
NewsRescue- Google and it’s Youtube venture are increasingly becoming the focus of campaigns in the war against hate speech provoked by a publicized anti-Islam hate-speech propaganda movie made by coptic Christians in the US.
The movie has been hosted on Youtube since its release and though access to the website was blocked/restricted in Muslim countries, the movie still remains on the site for global viewership, sparking the anger of users.
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Messages are increasingly being broadcast, tweeted and emailed for users to boycott Google and Youtube in a global strike action. Some messages are asking Muslim users to partake in this protest for the promotion of the dignity of the Holy Prophet Mohammed(P) by boycotting these websites for three days.
On September 14th, the United States White House politely asked Google to take down the movie, ‘innocence of Muslims’, for possible violations of its use policies. Google refused.
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AlArabiya- While violent demonstrations were the most obvious form of protest against the film that derides Prophet Mohammed, other angry Muslims were fighting a different battle as they called for getting back at the websites responsible for propagating the film, namely YouTube and Google.
Another camp calls for YouTube to respond to “The Innocence of Muslims” through making a series of videos that set right the falsities propagated in the movie, acquainting people with the truth about Islam.
Google, which owns YouTube, has similarly become an enemy and there have been calls for taking an action against it in several parts in the Arab world. For example, in Egypt a lawsuit was filed at the Administrative Court by two NGOs, the Egyptian Association for Legal Development and the Horizons of Development, against the prime minister and the ministers of telecommunications and investment, and Google Egypt and Middle East.
The two non-profit organizations called for closing down Google Egypt for inciting sedition through posting the movie, the Egyptian daily independent al-Wafd reported.
The lawsuit also called upon Google to issue a public apology for Muslims all over the world for insulting them by posting the movie and to pay $2 billion in compensation for the moral damages inflicted upon Egyptians and all Muslims.
According to the plaintiffs, Google violated its moral commitments to its users when it showed the video which is believed to desecrate the beliefs of more than a billion people across the world.
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Shaarawi Abdel Baki, chairman of an Arab rights group, said the matter will be taken to an international level in order to make sure Google is duly penalized.
“If necessary we will go to the International Criminal Court and the Security Council and will take measures against every entity that took part in making and propagating the movie,” he said.
Abdel Baki accused Google of intentionally insulting Islam and Muslims because it refused a request by the American government to remove the film and insisted on its stance even after the violent reactions that followed.
“Google is to be blamed for this sedition that is tearing through the Muslim world,” he added.
Abdel Baki also argued that while Western countries accuse Muslims of terrorism, they are the ones who practice terrorism.
“This is the worst form of psychological terrorism not only for Muslims but for anyone with morals,” he concluded.
Russia may block YouTube over Mohammed video
Posted By Joshua Keating Wednesday, September 19, 2012 – 11:09 AM
When Russia passed a new internet law billed as a crackdown on online child pornography back in July, critics worried that the law was vague enough that it could be used as a pretext to block political speech. It looks like the first test case for the law may not be anti-Putin agitators, but “The Innocence of Muslims”:
MOSCOW, Sept 18 (Reuters) – Access to YouTube across Russia could be blocked under a new law that takes effect on Nov. 1 if the portal does not remove a video mocking the Prophet Mohammad, the country’s communications minister said on Tuesday.[…]
“Because of this video, YouTube could be blocked throughout the territory of Russia,” Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov, one of the opponents of the new law, wrote in his Twitter microblog. “If a law is passed it should be enforced.”
The video does contain discussions of pedophilia by Mohammed’s followers, but it’s not clear if that’s the reason for the ban, as Leonid Bershidsky writes:
Some Internet users in the Chechen Republic joined a three-day boycott of Google and YouTube to protest against The Innocence of Muslims. “We will not allow these devils to insult Muslims,” Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said.
Suddenly, Russia’s new Internet law wasn’t just about children anymore. On September 17, Senator Ruslan Gattarov that the Prosecutor General act against the film, reasoning that The Innocence of Muslims was “no better than child pornography, only this was directed against Muslims.” The Prosecutor General’s Office immediately proclaimed the movie “extremist” and filed suit to ban it. Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov tweeted: “This is no joke. Because of this clip, YouTube as a whole could be completely blocked in Russia.”
Pakistan and Bangladesh have reportedly blocked access to YouTube because of the video. Google has agreed to block access to the clip itself in India, Indonesia, Libya, and Egypt, to comply with local laws.
Russian courts now have five days to determine whether the video is “extremist,” but blocking all of YouTube will seem like a pretty drastic step by Nov. 1, when the furor over the video will, hopefully, have died down. In this case, my money is on Moscow blinking before Mountain View does.
But Nikiforov has also seemingly tipped the government’s hand here: It’s now pretty clear that the new Internet law is about more than just porn. Link: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/09/19/russia_may_block_youtube_over_mohammed_video