YouTube Pulls Clips

After coming under intense pressure from politicians and Jewish groups for featuring far-right propaganda on its file-sharing Web site YouTube, Google Germany has agreed to remove the offending videos.

Earlier this week, Germany's Central Council of Jews contacted YouTube administrators and the German Authority for Youth Protection on the Internet to demand that material glorifying Nazi ideology be deleted. A number of politicians called for a legal investigation into the matter.

After YouTube failed to react, a number of Jewish leaders announced they were considering legal action.

Clamping down

But in an interview with the online version of Stern magazine Thursday, Google spokesman Kay Oberbeck said the video community platform would be removing the material, which numbers hundreds of videos.

"We very definitely want to distance ourselves from any videos that incite hatred," he said. "This content is illegal and in breach of YouTube guidelines."

"Clearly, YouTube has a vested interest in removing illegal, inflammatory videos from the platform," he added.

In future, he said, YouTube will operate more stringent controls of the material posted on the site, with users encouraged to help monitor material.

"Our complaints system designed to pinpoint such breaches of the law will have to be improved with the help of our users," Oberbeck said. "No system is perfect, and we intend to work very hard to operate tighter controls."

However, legal observers argue that YouTube is based in the US, which enforces laws protecting free speech. Countries such as Turkey which have censored YouTube have come in for heavy criticism and been forced to lift their bans.