Why create something like YouTube, if not to foster people's creativity and the ability to share the creative result (videos) with others? Did YouTube's creators envision that one day, at the height of the site's popularity, special interests would censor it? Is YouTube cool with its emasculation at the hands of CAIR, MPAC, et al?

I recently read an online interview with the owner/creator of YouTube, who stated that, despite the massive wealth that could be generated by a sale of the site, he wasn't interested. I seem to recall that he wasn't in it for the money (which I call B.S., as ultimately everything on the 'net is about money), and that the uniqueness of the site would be lost in commercializing its content. I think he'd better get a handle on this: the sooner people realize outsiders can censor content they find politically objectionable, the sooner they will move on to an alternative venue that doesn't allow such manipulation.

In point of fact, I have never deleted or screened out a single comment due to the commenter's viewpoint. But I do require that people express their views civilly and without personal insults, and in a way that advances the discussion.

While YouTube is, ostensibly, a viewpoint-neutral service for use by anyone, this blog is like my online home. It's where I hang out. And I don't like to hang out with jerks.

You misunderstand the nature of censorship. A commitment to free speech values does not require me to invite people I dislike into my own home. It does require me to respect their right to express themselves in their own homes, or in appropriate public fora.

Riding Sun, as a personal blog, is hardly analogous to an open-to-the-public service like YouTube. YouTube is more like the video equivalent of a blogging service, like Blogger, Powerblogs, or SixApart. Those services shouldn't be in the business of telling users what they can write on their own individual blogs, just as YouTube should not be in the business of censoring its users' videos.

Your insistence that I, as an individual blogger, have some sort of obligation to let people post anything they want on my own personal site, is analogous to saying that an individual YouTube user has an obligation to let other people stick offensive, insulting videos on that person's individual user page.

If you can't see the distinction, then we'll have to agree to disagree.

The way you choose to define your blog, as your living room, for example, or YouTube as a public space, is irrelevant.

Says you. It's absolutely relevant.

If you have some friends over to your house and you're talking politics, and I walk in off the street and say you're all a bunch of idiots, and you kick me out, are you engaging in "censorship"? Or are you simply insisting on your right to choose who you associate with on your own private property?

Finally, your last accusation, that this post represents an excuse to engage in "Muslim-bashing", is ridiculous and unsubstantiated (much like your censorship accusation, come to think of it). What about the post represents "bashing", to you? Frankly, it's the kind of baseless charge someone throws around when he's looking to start a flame war instead of have a meaningful discussion.

I think you've got that backwards, GetReal. If an argument, comment, or point of view can not be expressed without resorting to profanity or attacking someone's heritage, etc., then the argument itself is not valid. The alternative view is probably just fine.

I think this is another example of a common flaw in democratic systems: when you give to the majority of people the power to decide (in this case censor) all goes well until the majority think different. Of course, since israeli and their supporter are numerically a minority a straigthforward majority democratic system cannot protect their interest.

On the other side, straigthforward majority systems are what is publicized as the "best" and "democratic" way of do things, mainly by usa propaganda (also eu propaganda, but we don't have your wide audience so it matter less), so YouTube is doing the "right thing" from the common point of view.

Your observation about the YouTube policy is, imho, a very good point for starting a wider discussion on decision making systems. Remember that this particular problem (majority of people think wrong) is exactly what your government avoided using undemocratic systems (stay-behind secret services operations) in post wwii europe, and expecially in italy where we had the most powerful of the wester communist parties.

``If you have some friends over to your house and you're talking politics, and I walk in off the street and say you're all a bunch of idiots, and you kick me out, are you engaging in "censorship"? ''

American Heritage says: ``to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.''

You have no argument, GB. You censor this blog, period. You can assert that the censorship is justified, but you just can't argue it doesn't exist.

Furthermore, a blog isn't like your living room. It's very, very different. One of the best, if not the best, thing about the technology that allows blogs is that it enables a reasonable, unfettered clash of views.

I have a feeling if I were in your living room, the minute I brought up an inconvenient fact about, say, the West Bank, you'd start shouting me down--something you can't do on a blog.

Were I in your living room, I would find it very difficult to ignore your shouting. On this blog, it's easy. You can try to belittle or insult me all you want, to no effect, as I can just scroll past it.

Anyone with a genuine interest in free speech would recognize these important differences between a blog and a living room.

If you want to criticize YouTube for censoring, you should first stop doing it yourself.

As for my reference to your anti-Muslim campaign, I think any regular readers here know what I'm talking about. But please, prove me wrong. Show me how you've been either fair or balanced in writing about Muslims, and I'll stand very gladly corrected.

One of the best, if not the best, thing about the technology that allows blogs is that it enables a reasonable, unfettered clash of views.

And yet some of the most popular blogs, like Instapundit or BoingBoing, don't allow comments at all, or post only selected reader feedback. Go figure.

But regardless, the irony in all of this is that I do allow a "reasonable, unfettered clash of views" on my blog. If you want to argue that Israel should dissolve itself and hand over its land to the Palestinians, go right ahead. I ask only that you express your view in a civil way.

I've never screened out a comment because I disagreed with the person's point of view, although I've screened out comments for name-calling, personal insults, foul language, and so forth. If that's too much fettering for you, well, too bad.

American Heritage says: ``to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.''

With all due respect to the good people at American Heritage, that definition is rather lacking. If Michael Moore sends me a Farenheit 9-11 DVD and I throw it in the trash, I've removed it from my house. But have I "censored" it? Obviously not.

Censorship, I think, involves removing something from somewhere it belonged in the first place. For example, it is the purpose of a library to make a wide range of books available to the public. So if a town bans a particular book from its public library, it is censoring it. Similarly, YouTube has set itself up as a service designed to be used by the public. If it bans certain kinds of videos, it's censoring them.

But my blog, once again, is a personal endeavor run by me for my benefit and enjoyment. Sure, other people may read it, but if I didn't enjoy blogging, I wouldn't keep doing it just for them. So the only comments that "belong" here are ones that I feel contribute positively to the blog and my enjoyment of it. And personal attacks definitely do not. It's one thing to expect a company like YouTube to let people freely post videos about various subjects on its site. It's another thing to expect an individual person to open his door wide to people who only want to insult him.

It seems you have a different opinion about what the purpose of my blog is, and what my obligations are in running it. Fortunately for me, your opinion doesn't count.

If you prefer a closed, censored environment to a more "library-like" free forum… don't try to palm yourself off as any kind of a libertarian.

What do you think “libertarian” means? Wikipedia says:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy advocating that individuals should be free to do whatever they wish with their person or property, as long as they do not infringe on the same liberty of others. Libertarians hold as a fundamental maxim that all human interaction should be voluntary and consensual.

So Libertarianism says I should be free to do with my blog what I want, and that my interaction with people on it should be voluntary and consensual. In other words, I have no obligation to open it up to commenters who aren't behaving appropriately.

By acknowledging that this blog is an extension of your lifestyle, your "living room" as it were, you're admitting that, instinctively, you prefer control. That says a whole lot about the basis of your worldview.

Oh, please. Do you choose certain people to hang out with, and others to avoid? Or do you associate with random people, including some who are rude and insulting to you? If the former, then you “prefer control”. We all do. It’s not a “worldview”, it’s common sense.

As I recall, you also argued against — even vilified the proponents of — publishing photos of U.S. atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib.

If I recall correctly (since you are referencing, but not linking to, posts from a year or more ago), I argued against publishing a second round of Abu Ghraib photos showing the same sort of abuses that the first set did. And I never said the government should prevent the media from publishing the photos, only that the media should consider whether the additional news value of the new photos outweighed the risk that they could incite further hostility against Americans serving in Iraq and elsewhere. The media use such discretion all the time, such as when they refused to publish the infamous Mohammed cartoons earlier this year. I was making a call not for censorship, but for good judgment.

Free speech is never about accommodating what one thinks is civil or appropriate. It's about acknowledging, even celebrating, that the best answer to offensive speech is ALWAYS either self-evidence or retort, not censorship.

Sure, the best answer to bad speech is more speech, but I may not feel like personally providing that speech. The fact that someone bangs out a rude or hostile comment doesn't necessarily mean that I feel like spending my limited and valuable time composing a carefully-worded response. People who insist on making such comments can make them elsewhere, because frankly, I’m not interested in dealing with them. Their freedom to speak is not my duty to listen.

The very fact that GB has bothered to engage such trollish behavior in the comments of this post argues that he believes, even on his private site, in the principle of free speech and in responding to offensive speech with more speech.

I would just point out that in this thread, Nero and MB are actually providing good examples of disagreeing with me without using offensive language or personal attacks, more or less, which is why I've spent time responding to them.

I can't say I enjoy their overall tone, which is one of snide derision, not collegial disagreement. But they haven't quite crossed the line into out-and-out hostility and rudeness.

Still, you have to wonder why they spend so much time reading the blog of someone they obviously don't respect.

No offense, guys - but I think you are missing the point.

If Michelle had simply said, "First, Islamic Extremists Came for..." instead of the simplistic, broad and unneccessarily glib "First, they came for..." we'd be having a completely different conversation. Because the former would be factually accurate, if a little sensationalistic. The latter is incendiary and appears to unfairly indict a whole religion. I don't know how the discussion got turned away from the empirical inaccuracy of Malkin's title card verbage and into a discussion of the democratic principles of a wholly private enterprise, but it has. The better question is: Is the video, as it stands, defensible? Would there be a single American okay with a montage of KKK violence and aftermath strung together with titling that transitioned between images of Emmitt Till dead and Martin Luther King shot, saying, "first, they came for..."? We Americans would understand the ridiculousness of not making the distinctions, but those ignorant of the minutae of our history would not.

And so we come back to Malkin's video.

I don't disagree with the comments made about YouTube needing to maintain some consistency about their screening process. But the right only gives fuel to the left when they cynically capitalize on racist, fear-mongering bigotry.

Not that I would ever, EVER call Michelle a racist, fear-mongering bigot. That's what Ann Coulter is for. (Just kidding, Ann! No one with those legs could be a bigot!)

Talk about a double standard!

There is no "double standard", just two things judged by the same standard. The Abu Ghraib photos showed terrible, guresome acts committed by American troops, at a time when many other American troops were, and are, still at risk in a war zone. The Mohammed cartoons were... cartoons. Relatively innocuous ones, at that.

When you set up a blog of your own and spend countless hours working on it, MB, then you can tell me what it feels like to have other people come in and louse it up with insults, foul language, or what have you. To me, the living room analogy is quite apt. If you don't want to see what I've written here, no one is forcing you to come by. I, however, have no such choice but to see everything anyone writes here: This is my online home. And there are some things, and some people, I don't want in my home. You may have a different opinion of how I should feel about my blog, but as I said to Nero, your opinion on this issue doesn't matter.

I think the only "obsession" here is the one you and Nero have with branding me a hypocrite, Muslim-basher, and who knows what else at every turn. Radical Islam is a real problem in the world, like it or not, and to treat ever attempt to touch on the issue as "Muslim-bashing" is a cheap rhetorical tactic aimed at shutting down honest debate.

And honest debate, not name-calling and personal attacks, is what I want here at Riding Sun. I should think that as as this thread in which you accuse me of censorship has now grown to almost 25 comments, most quite long and substantive, that this would be clear to you.

The media in America and most Western countries is not obligated to avoid "blasphemy". The cartoons were at the center of one of the biggest news stories at the time, and for the media to report on the stories without showing their readers what all the fuss was about was ridiculous.

Actually, upon further reflection, publishing the Mohammed cartoons is not analogous to publishing new Abu Ghraib photos for a different reason: Many media companies refused to publish the Mohammed cartoons out of simple fear that their offices or employees would be attacked by Muslims, or that their companies would be subject to Muslim boycotts. The double-standard, then, is with the news media, which prides itself on its rock-solid committment to publishing the truth — unless it might harm their own interests.

A better comparison to publishing the Abu Ghraib photos might be refusal to publish photos of people jumping from the WTC towers on 9-11, and other gruesome footage from that day. Or refusal to publish photos of the bloody aftermath of suicide bombers in Israel. Or refusal to publish photos of insurgents beheading their victims in Iraq, and so on. Such photos and footage have been notably scarce in the MSM, often with the explanation that "we don't want to upset people." This is code for, "We don't want Americans to get angry at the people who do these things." So the media thinks it's OK to publish disturbing photos if they might get Muslims upset at America, but not if they might get Americans upset at Muslims.

I don't have an anti-Muslim bias, although I do have a very strong bias against the kinds of things some Muslims do and support in the name of their religion. The idea that it's unacceptable to criticize such things, and the beliefs and teachings that inspire them, is false. I'm proud to be biased against violent religious extremism, anti-semitism, oppression of women, oppression of homosexuals, slavery, and so forth.

Furthermore, the idea that you are performing some sort of public service by goading me into compiling a record that "exposes" these views is laughable. Surely whatever bias I have comes through just fine in my posts, without any help from you in the comments section. But if you think it's such an important mission, why don't you set up one of those watchdog sites, like "ridingsunwatch.com"? That might be the best way for you to expose my horrible prejudices fully, and you wouldn't have to worry about being "censored", either.

If it's against Muslims, GB is for it, if it favors Muslims, GB is agaisnt it. On that, GB NEVER contradicts himself.

Uh, I'm against "honor killings", which hurt Muslims. I'm against stoning Muslim women for commiting adultery. I'm against the suicide bombings in Iraq and Egypt and Jordan and elsewhere that kill Muslims. And I'm against dictators like Saddam, who oppressed and murdered Muslims. I guess none of that counts.

Personally, as an atheist, I don't care if someone worships Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And I think that the Muslims out there who want to live in peace (as well as the non-Muslims who want to live in peace!) are ill-served by those who promote an Islam full of murder, oppression, and punishment.

Something tells me that once Google has purchased Youtube, the censorship is only going to get worse.