I think that some people are underestimating the size of you tube and more importantly their owners, Google. What you must remember is that Google have just bought the YouTube brand for $1.65bn and it’s closure, I could imagine, would be incredibly unlikely.

Why not instead try to find a way to work with, rather against YouTube in order to ensure that the unfair bullying of teachers and students, is stopped.

You must remember how even with a YouTube closure, there are still hundreds of other similar sites which your students will use instead, and closing every multibillion dollar website is not going to be favourable by their owners, employees, genuine users and the industry.

Is it not possible to use the video clips to help catch the perpetrators? Presumably even if the perpetrators manage to keep themselves unidentifiable in the clip, and upload it to YouTube through an anonymous account, both the victim surely often knows who they were, and YouTube must know what IP address the clip was uploaded from (as well as details of the camera/phone it was filmed on).

There are dozens and dozens of video sharing sites, like YouTube, including Viddler, Blip.tv, Google Video, Vimeo, blinkx, MySpace, and OurMedia. Closing one service would have no impact on video sharing as a whole, as users would simply move to another site. And if you tried to shut down all video sharing services, eventually you would run into one that was based in a country where you couldn’t bring pressure to bear.

Indeed, I would questions whether or not it is even possible to “shut down” video sharing sites, as the vast majority of content on these sites is not objectionable (leaving copyright infringement aside, as there is already adequate recourse for rights holders to get infringing material removed). YouTube are certainly not going to submit without a fight, and I am unsure on what legal grounds one could bring about their closure.

But for me, the biggest objection I have to this call to shut YouTube is that it will do precisely nothing to prevent bullying. Bullying is a complex social problem, and so the solutions that might actually be effective are going to be neither headline-grabbing nor simple. I am sure that research has been done into bullying, and that would be where I would start – why do some children turn into bullies and others their victims? Then I’d find out what solutions to bullying have been tried, and which ones worked? Would reducing class sizes help? How about training teachers and classroom assistants in how to deal with bullying? How about providing more money for youth centres and other places where children and teenagers can go when they are not in school? How about examining ways to improve the engagement of parents in their children’s schooling?

Complex social problems need complex social solutions.

The moment you do that, the Internet will do the work it is designed to do, ant the videos would appear elsewhere (USENET, other websites, email chains, P2P networks, ftp sites, Second Life). Can somebody tell this people that the cat is out of the bag and there is no way to put it back there?

The root problem is children bullying and beating others that think it is funny. Some people want to treat the symptom forgetting about the root cause.

Take care of how society function and these videos would disappear by themselves.

As for YouTube specifically, there is a big button there to report inappropriate material. If today’s teachers can’t master this basic computing skill (registering themselves in a website to report a problem) one has to wonder if they are prepared to lead a classrom where most children will be technologically savy.

Madam, you are absolutely correct to be skeptical about this “proposal”.

Furthermore, I probably agree with you, but still feel strongly about protecting people from being exposed. Can you imagine a child physically assaulted by a gang of people and their humilating experience is uploading onto youtube or any other websites, so that a few people can get laughs. That must be heartbreaking to families……Same could go for teachers whom may also fall victim. I am sure you agree that we need to strike some form of balance?

As regards the question of whether YouTube deal properly with complaints when they are made – the one example given of this supposedly not happening again is not a very convincing one – see my original post.

Throughout the early segments of Panorama, its researcher further discussed another website called LiveLeak- http://www.liveleak.com/ which, according to Panorama, allows its users to upload children fighting or attacking other kids, and that the founder refused publicly to ‘take down the extremely violent videos we Panorama brought to his attention.’ During his interview, he stated to Panorama that: “Look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we’re going to show it”.

The difficult question is how far would we go in banning material that we regard as unpleasant? I certainly would want bullying and violent material removed. But someone else would argue, why not ban this or that etc etc. It is all debatable. There should be an open and robust debate on this issue.

In a democratic and open society, if cases of this nature are occurring, then people need to know about it. But there are certainly far more civilised and appropriate mechanisms to ensure that happens. However, using such material to make money and become rich as some companies are is simply unacceptable.

What do you think LYNNE? Do you think it Youtube should be shut down?