Thursday, August 02, 2007

YouTube closure


Freedom of speech is a right we seldom use in Oman to the point that we allow ourselves to be compromised by other options to take in as 2nd choices. Unfortunately, it seems that even that itself is going to be taken away from us if there isn't act too soon to regulate the ill-use of teenagers and children alike of websites and what parents and school teachers should be doing about monitoring their use of the world wide web.

As in a report by the Times of Oman, a petition has been backed up in London, UK to push forward closing down the world's largest video sharing website that came to be established by the year 1995. This petition has been moved to stop the growing scene of cyber-bullying on the Internet such as threats through videos posted on the site to teachers and school staff or even faculty and students.

As far as Catriona Tait of Dundee, Scotland - UK, she says:

"Nobody should be subjected to such humiliation anywhere, let alone in their place of work," she said, demanding the closure of sites "encouraging this irresponsible use of technology."

But does YouTube really encourage cyber-bullying?

YouTube is really a means to reach out to the millions of people with Internet linked computers, something which mostly comes positively onto the lives of many people all over the world and as a spokesman for YouTube states;

"It's also used by organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to reach people on a range of important issues. Sadly as with any form of communication, there is a tiny minority of people who try to break the rules."

So is it really fair to condemn a website to group punishment when you should aim at the source?

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Links: - YouTube - TimesofOman.com: British teacher's union calls for YouTube closure

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

:o
Agreed cyberbullying is an issue but closing down YouTube is not gonna change much.
I think this a mistake a lot of people make...taking a general action instead of working on th root cause.

Sleepless In Muscat said...

Exactly. If anything, there should be some kind of stricter administrative privileges over the uses of a PC and Internet to stop such acts.