Police target YouTube over copycat crimes

THE spiralling amount of violent and illegal material on online video-sharing sites such as YouTube is being targeted by a new government task force.

Amid fears that the material can incite crime or give rise to copycat incidents, a team of officials, including police representatives, is in talks with website operators and internet service providers on how to flag up problem content more quickly so it can be removed.

Earlier this month, Finnish teenager Pekka-Eric Auvinen posted a series of disturbing videos on the internet, including some on YouTube, before beginning a shooting spree in his school.

Shortly afterwards, a British teenager who issued an internet challenge to boy racers to speed in a residential road was fined £140 for careless driving.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We have concerns about material being posted on websites and so we have set up a group of officials from across government to look at what can be done. Quite apart from the offences themselves, someone who films a crime could be guilty of being an accessory or aiding and abetting a crime."

A spokesman added that the talks involved representatives from police, as well as liaison with the internet industry.

A senior police source said: "What we're concerned about is that these videos could be inciting copycat crimes. There is no empirical evidence that this is the case; the whole phenomenon is too new. But there is an issue nonetheless."

The source said it was unrealistic to consider pre-screening videos for signs of previous or potential crimes because of the sheer volume of material.

A YouTube spokesman said that six hours of footage is uploaded to the website every minute, making it impossible to filter out problem films in advance. But he said that the company was ready to cooperate with the authorities in removing anything which might incite a crime.

He said: "YouTube is a community site used by millions of people in very positive ways. Sadly, as with any form of communication, there is a tiny minority of people who try to break the rules.

"On YouTube, these rules prohibit content like pornography or gratuitous violence. When people see content that they think is inappropriate, they can flag it and our staff then review it.

"If the content breaks our terms then we remove it, and if a user repeatedly breaks the rules we disable their account. If the police ask us for information we will cooperate, so long as they follow the correct legal process that the government introduced."

Until now, government policy has been not to prosecute viewers of video-sharing sites because of the problems of proving that they knew what they might be about to view. The focus has been instead on preventing problematic content from appearing in the first place.

In addition to violence and crime, the authorities have taken action against material they consider to be glorifying terrorism.