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YouTube, a popular Web site for free sharing of online videos, is
increasingly being used by communities, youths, progressive movements
and radicals worldwide to expose injustice, protest the horrors of
imperialist war, and promote revolutionary ideas to a global audience.

At the same time, U.S. corporate monopolies–including YouTube's owner,
Google, and rivals like Viacom and NBC Universal–are battling to
exercise control over the site's contents and censor those voices that
interfere with their goal of turning it into a profit-making machine.

Created by three former PayPal employees in 2005, YouTube now streams
more than 200 million videos and adds 200,000 new videos to its
library daily. It is a truly global phenomenon, with viewers outside
the U.S. watching 70 percent of all videos streamed. (Associated
Press, May 20)

According to the Toronto Star, the site has 40 million visitors
monthly, and the number is climbing.

YouTube's creators sold the site last year for $1.65 billion in Google
stock. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, two of the creators who remain
spokespeople for YouTube, seem content to accommodate Google's moves
to introduce aggressive advertising on the site, develop software
capable of censoring material objectionable to advertisers and the
state, and clamp down on posting of so-called copyright-protected
materials, like clips from TV shows and Hollywood films.

But the site, with its millions of users worldwide, has far outgrown
the proprietary claims of any individuals or corporation. It has
become a truly mass, participatory forum and should be the common
property of all.
Police terror exposed

In the U.S., the most dramatic effect of mass YouTube use has been to
expose cases of police brutality—incidents that otherwise would have
been completely covered up by the cops or quickly silenced by the
mainstream media.

And thanks to features allowing users to easily share videos, these
exposures can spread like wildfire.

In November 2006, no fewer than three cases of brutality by the Los
Angeles Police Department were exposed via YouTube videos.

William Cardenas was punched in the face repeatedly by cops, who
accused him of being a "gang member." The FBI was forced to open an
investigation into violations of Cardenas' civil rights after the
video was widely seen. A second video showed cops beating a restrained
prisoner in a police cruiser.

The third—shot on a camera phone in the University of California-Los
Angeles Library—showed police shooting with taser guns Mostafa
Tabatabainejad, a 23-year-old Iranian-born student, because he had
forgotten his ID. The video also shows angry students demanding the
cops' names and protesting the violation of Tabatabainejad's civil
rights. A cop then threatened to attack these students, too. (MoJo
Blog, Nov. 16, 2006)

Based on this video evidence, Tabatabainejad has now brought a lawsuit
against the LAPD.

These exposures have sown fear among cops and concern throughout the
capitalist state. In today's world of high technology combined with
growing repression, every worker is a potential George Holliday—the
amateur videographer who captured the brutal LAPD beating of Rodney
King in 1991.

The phenomenon isn't limited to Los Angeles. From Pennsylvania to
Florida, from Middleport, N.Y., to Denver, YouTube has been used as a
platform to expose cop terror.

After Michigan State University students were arrested protesting a
Minuteman bigot in East Lansing on April 19, organizers posted videos
showing the police use of excessive force, witness statements, and
interviews with university administrators exposing their collaboration
with the racists.

And when police attacked immigrant rights demonstrators in both Los
Angeles and New York on May Day, YouTube was used to rapidly spread
the word.

Outside the U.S., forces fighting back against imperialism have
adopted the medium as well. You can watch videos explaining the views,
methods and aims of the revolutionary movement in Nepal, witness May
Day marches in India and Turkey, or watch subtitled films from
Cultural Revolution-era China that are unlikely to ever see commercial
release on DVD.

Corporate media in the U.S. and Israel reacted with outrage in May
when clips of "Tomorrow's Pioneers" appeared on YouTube. This
children's show, produced by the Palestinian Hamas movement, promotes
resistance to U.S. imperialism and Israeli occupation and is hosted by
a Mickey Mouse-like character called Farfur.
Pentagon hypocrisy

Of course, it's not only anti-imperialists who are using this
technology. The Minutemen and other Klan types use it. And now the
Pentagon has joined in, hoping to exploit YouTube as a recruiting
device by showing clips of U.S. troops triumphant in battles with "the
enemy" in Iraq.

The Pentagon launched the "Multi-National Forces Iraq" channel in
March. The Los Angeles Times reported that the channel was viewed more
than 120,000 times in its first month.

Now–not coincidentally—the Defense Department has put a blanket ban on
the use of YouTube and 12 other popular information-sharing sites by
U.S. military personnel.

CNN reported May 14: "Iraqi insurgents and their supporters have been
posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall. The Army recently
began posting videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents
and befriending Iraqis.

"But the new rules mean many military personnel won't be able to watch
those achievements–at least not on military computers. ... Defense
Department computers and networks are the only ones available to many
soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Nobody's buying the government's claim that the ban is needed to save
Defense Department bandwidth. It's an obvious ploy to keep angry and
demoralized U.S. troops from exposing the dire quagmire they find
themselves in or posting videos of Pentagon abuses.

Many military families have expressed outrage, since these sites were
one of the few ways soldiers could keep in touch with their loved ones
at home.

Next up is the 2008 presidential election–already dubbed the "YouTube
Election" by some mainstream pundits. Democratic Party candidates
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are making extensive use of the site.

YouTube and MySpace, the social networking Web site owned by Rupert
Murdoch, are both co-sponsoring primary debates of the Democratic and
Republican candidates. (Los Angeles Times, May 20)
Battle for control

The corporate struggle to dominate YouTube and profit from its
popularity has many similarities to the battle over file-sharing
programs like Napster, which peaked a few years ago with
music-industry lawsuits against students (in some cases, minors) for
swapping music files. While free file sharing still exists, much of it
has been co-opted by pay-per-song sites and file-protected CDs.

However, in the case of YouTube, there is a basis for a much broader
struggle based on the mass, participatory character of video file
sharing—of which the exposures of police brutality are powerful
examples.

Again, the public battle lines are being drawn over the issue of
"copyright protection" and "intellectual property" by mammoth media
companies.

But this is really just a smokescreen. It amounts to positioning by
the media monopolies for a bigger cut of the profits once a way is
eventually found to turn free video sharing into a controllable,
profitable business model.

The real action is going on behind the scenes–the moves to introduce a
video advertising component to YouTube and to develop software to
curtail the site's free-for-all contents and make it more "advertiser
friendly."

The posture of the U.S. capitalist political establishment at this
juncture seems to be to let this process of "free market censorship"
play itself out rather than mount a frontal assault on those who use
the site for progressive and revolutionary ends.

Of course, there is no guarantee that this will remain the case.
Who will control new technology?

Workers World wrote about file-sharing: "The controversy over Napster
raises important issues for the international workers' movement. Chief
among them is: Who will control the revolutionary new technology that
allows the free exchange of music, art and all kinds of information?

"Will it be dominated by capitalists seeking profit? Or will workers
and oppressed people control it?" ("Napster and the right to free
music," WW, Aug. 10, 2000)

YouTube is another example of how technology has outgrown the
constraints of private property and capitalism. What could be more
natural than for people to freely share videos with their community,
family or comrades, down the block or across the ocean?

Yet capitalism must find a way to constrain, control and censor so
that the profit system isn't compromised. The genie must be shoved
back into the bottle by any means necessary.

What is needed is an international struggle for control by YouTube
users, along with communities, organizations of workers and oppressed
people, and unions, to ensure the right of the people to use the
service, end corporate domination and rout the apologists for
imperialism and racism.

It's a fight that can't be confined to the computer keyboard. It must
come out into the streets, as exemplified by those who are using the
technology today to expose police brutality.
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
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