Youtube Bans Mark Twain

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According to Victoria Grand, Senior Manager for Communications at Youtube, all content that is flagged as being in contravention of the Community Guidelines is reviewed by a human operator. It is only after this reviewing process that the video is taken down, age restricted, or passed for public consumption. The reviewing process supposedly looks at both the raw content of the video and at the context in which it sits. The footage you will see in this video is a reading from 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', the novel by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), by respected Youtube user Wetlands Remediation. This video has been removed by Youtube for infringement of the Community Guidelines, presumably because it contains (and was originally titled) 'Niggers'. Clearly this content has been removed by Youtube without any reference whatsoever to either the content itself nor the context to which it refers.

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References:

Victoria Grand speaking on Youtube's content removal policies - http://blip.tv/globalvoices/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-youtube-s-content-rem...

Wetlands Remediation new channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/VoxNeruda

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This video is part of a series made in conjunction with the 15th annual Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts conference, Shanghai, China. The event is hosted by the Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Nottingham at the university's Ningbo, China campus.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/drha/index.aspx

"This year's conference will explore the new connectivities in societies and cultures which are enabled by the blending of virtual and physical space, the traversing of time and space through the virtual, and the evolution of innovative methodologies. Crossing disciplines and challenging boundaries within the humanities, arts and the creative industries, this conference will examine critically familiar notions of the 'local', the 'global' and the 'network' across the cultural spectrum."

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Youtube
• Google
• DRHA
• digital
• resources
• humanities
• arts
• WetlandsRemediation
• VoxNeruda
• crowdsourcing
• flagging
• community
• guidelines
• Nottingham
• University
• China
• Ningbo
• Shanghai

[nickyantichav]

does this dude have another channel??

[conferencereport]

@nickyantichav Yes, he's now VoxNeruda

[gratex]

If I wrote a story called niggers it'd be trolling,  Mark twain does it and he's a legend.

[conferencereport]

@gratex To be fair, the story was called Huck Finn.

[gratex]

@conferencereport that's just code, fred, like 1488!

[conferencereport]

@gratex I have no idea what you're talking about, please speak Inglish. We don't want none of your celtic jibber jabber in these parts.

[conferencereport]

@gratex Ok, I've looked it up.

[BaileysBeads]

Does this mean all hip-hop music videos need to be taken down as well?

[GalacticFunk42]

How dare Youtube ban this. This is American history. And Youtube took it down, why? Because he used the nigger? For using a common ethnic slur?! How many Youtube partners use the word "nigger"? How many of those partners get banned? ZERO! *sigh* youtube...

[nickyantichav]

@conferencereport brilliant .. found him. cheers  :D

[Laughingbear1960]

YouBoob did not JUST ban the video, YouBoob banned Wetlands Remediation and Cowpox for his usage of FREE MotherF**kin SPEECH.

[monkeytwineball]

A video of a hobo... reading Huck Fin... in an meth lab?

Epic.

[Christheatheist1]

Youtube are becoming the ultra PC, bed sheet wearing, broccoli smoothie drinking douche bags from Demolition Man. Hail Neruda!

[Steelfossil]

Youtube policy is fucked up...

[urquiza78]

@VoxNeruda I hear what you saying although I'm not a legal expert perhaps it was the pluralising of the word also. I do think as a community on youtube however we have a duty to be considerate with regard to the sensitivities of others which are not completely akin to other people's way of thinking or understandings of the concepts and tales highlighted by Mark Twain.

[leconfidant]

Nope - This administrator is plain stupid and any politically correct excuses they wants to cite doesn't remover the fact that they're harming a culture they were paid to protect and nurture. Even if Twain's language was unforgivable, there ought to a record that this language existed and was typical of it's time. No-one's banning rap or hip-hop. Let the administrator come forward and offer a reason!

[VoxNeruda]

@DramaIama We know the difference between DE FACTO and DE JURIS.

But do understand, YouTube's pretense of law is forever stripped.