Anti-Islam film prompts Saudi call for
net censorship body
Christopher Williams ("The Telegraph," October 11, 2012)
In a submission to forthcoming international talks on
internet governance, the Gulf state said “there is a crying
need for international collaboration to address ‘freedom of
_expression_’ which clearly disregards public order”.
During the controversy over a 14-minute clip posted on
YouTube and purportedly a trailer for a feature film called
“The Innocence of Muslims”, Google resisted pressure,
including from the White House, to remove it.
"This video - which is widely available on the web - is
clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube,"
Google said last month.
The Saudi government has now told the World
Telecommunications Policy Forum, a UN body, that the
incident was “an obvious example” of the need for greater
international cooperation to restrict content online.
“Any reasonable person would know that this film would
foment violence and, indeed, many innocent persons have died
and been injured with this film as a root cause,” the Saudi
submission said.
The amateurish clip, produced on tiny budget by Nakoula
Nakoula, a 55-year-old Egyptian Coptic Christian resident in
the United States, depicts the Prophet Mohammad as a fool
and sexual deviant.
In the uproar surrounding it, there were violent protests
in across the Middle East and North Africa, coinciding with
an attack by extremists on the American Embassy in Benghazi.
The Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other
officials were killed.
Following the attack Google did restrict access to “The
Innocence of Muslims” clip in Egypt and Libya on account of
“the very difficult situation”, but maintained its refusal
to delete it. The governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan
meanwhile ordered internet providers to completely cut off
access to YouTube.
The Saudi government called for greater international
cooperation to censor such material at the source, comparing
it to outlawed content such as images of child abuse and
malicious software.
“This behaviour, along with other malicious and criminal
activities such as child pornography, identity theft, spam,
denial of service attacks, and malware aimed at destroying
or crippling businesses, inter alia, must be addressed by
states in a collaborative and cooperative environment and
strongly underscores the need for enhanced cooperation,” it
said.
The submission highlights increasing interest in internet
governance discussions from nations that do not share
Western liberal values, as access to and the influence of
the web grows.
