Youtube censors videos

ONLINE VIDEO OUTFIT Youtube has come down hard on videos if they make double-entendres that might offend adults who think their children might be corrupted.

For a while Youtube has been censoring video advertisements for porn sites, strippers, and other content. But now has decided to have a new standard for so-called "mature" content which requires punters to be older than 18 to view.

However Yahoo's 18-year-old must be an easily-shocked puritan who has never uttered a swear word, or seen a woman's ankle, or who has never gone out of the house.

The 'mature' level is the sort of censorship standard that would appease your average Taliban cleric as it includes things that someone finds "sexually suggestive".

This includes "videos featuring individuals in minimal or revealing clothing which may also be age-restricted if they're intended to elicit a sexual response."

Youtube reviewers will also consider:

"whether breasts, buttocks, or genitals (clothed or unclothed) are the focal point of the video... whether the subject's actions in the video suggests a willingness to engage in sexual activity (e.g. kissing, provocative dancing, fondling)... "if a subject is minimally clothed, whether the clothing would be acceptable in appropriate public contexts (e.g. swimwear vs. underwear)."

It seems that Youtube has taken the same line that the BBC did during the 1950s and 60s when comedy shows had to pass similar bizarre criteria which banned phrases such as "winter draws on" as particularly disgusting.

We don't know who Youtube's reviewers would be. We guess it will be a panel of perfectly ordinary retired colonels, priests, nuns and, of course, loonies.

On the Inq we don’t have that problem, we think that the naked human body is something that everyone should have the right to read about whenever they like and our double-entendres are totally uncensored.µ

L'Inq
Arse Technica