Defense Department Bans YouTube
May 14th, 2007 at 6:11 amThe Department of Defense has banned soldiers serving overseas from accessing YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, and FileCabi, the social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5, music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.
The ostensible reasons given for the ban are excessive bandwidth consumption, compromed security, and reduced productivity.
One might draw comparisions between this decision and similar bans by Chinese, Vietnamese, and Iranian governments.
In making the comparison consider the substantial differences between totalitarian regimes and a free one. One of those differences is the free flow of information. That availability of information from a wide variety of sources provides the citizens of the free society with a perspective on what they are doing and what their country is doing. In a free society, the citizen decides.
In China, Vietnam, and Iran, not just the military, but the entire population has been involuntarily conscripted to listen to the party line. The American soldiers are volunteers. They want to be doing what they are doing.
They deserve to have as much information as is available.
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