On May 27, when RCTV's broadcast license expired, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez refused to renew it on the grounds that RCTV violated broadcast laws, supported a botched coup against him in 2002, and more generally offered a decidedly anti-governmental perspective. In spite of protests by thousands in the streets of Caracas, he replaced RCTV on May 28 with a state-run broadcast station.
On that same day, RCTV's news department -- operating on reduced staffing -- created a channel on YouTube on which it began airing daily three hour-long installments of its newscast "El Observador."Since then, many of RCTV's videos on YouTube have generated lively debates about freedom of expression in the "Comments & Responses" section. In the offline world, peaceful protests for freedom of speech and the reinstating of RCTV's broadcast rights continue to this day on the streets of Caracas......
So, ¡bienvenido RCTV! We predict and hope your example will inspire others to embrace the Internet as a critical means of communication when other means have been foreclosed.
Funnily enough, these champions of free speech and desemination of information neglected to report the following story.
Thankful someone was willing to speak out by embracing the internet as a critical means of communication (in fact Google blog's comment section) to denounce attempts to stifle free debate and discussion:
Hi,
My name is Luigino Bracci,
I was the owner of the channel "Lbracci" ( http://www.youtube.com/Lbracci ) in Youtube until June 11, 2007, when it was erased by Youtube.
In that channel, I uploaded more than 400 videos recorded from "Venezolana de Televisión" (VTV), a venezuelan state-owned TV channel, with full permission from that channel and obeying the venezuelan laws about copyright.
Unfortunely, a spanish TV channel, "Antena 3", made a complain to Youtube claiming that two videos recorded by me from "Venezolana de Television" and uploaded to Youtube were violating their copyrights (VTV used some footage from Antena 3, and that is NOT illegal in our country,nor in U.S.A. thanks to the "fair use" principle).
Youtube could erase just that pair of videos, but they prefer to delete my entire account and ALL of my 450 videos, including many videos that I could use to show you that some of your statements in this article are false, or half-truths.
The Youtube channel "elobservadorlinea" is showing only a very partial and right-wing vision of what is happening in our country, and Youtube choose to supress most of the videos showing alternative vissions.
So, what freedom of speech are you promoting? Freedom of speech just for the people that agrees with Google?
Wonder if those fearless fighters for democracy at Reporters Without Integrity, will speak out about this one.
So far Google is....well, how should i put it.....speechless
[If you read spanish then definitely check out Luigino's blog]
