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AUS: Assault spurs school YouTube ban
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- An Australian state has banned the online video Web site YouTube from government schools in a crackdown on cyber-bullying, a minister said Thursday.
Victoria, Australia's second most populous state, banned the popular video-sharing site from its 1,600 government schools after a gang of male school students videotaped their assault on a 17-year-old girl on the outskirts of Melbourne.
The assault, which is being investigated by police, was uploaded on YouTube late last year.
Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan said the schools and their Internet service providers already filtered the Web sites that were available to students, and YouTube had been added to a list of blocked sites.
The state government "has never tolerated bullying in schools and this zero tolerance approach extends to the online world," Allan said.
"All students have the right to learn in a safe and supportive learning environment -- this includes making students' experience of the virtual world of learning as safe and productive as possible," she said.
YouTube is a free video-sharing site that lets users upload, view, and share video clips.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Posted by: SoulRiser
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Posted in: News on March 2, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
Tags: School
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Too bad for the Aussie teens who are deprived of access to Youtube through this, as there's some good discussion there. There could be a good solution, although it would take an big investment of time and effort and going beyond limiting self-images.
Students could develop an alternative policy to address the issue of protecting people from being abused by videos of them being posted and viewed, and get that policy adopted by the school powers-that-be. Google might be convinced to cooperate in looking for legal and administrative options, also. Its a bit of a long haul, but it can certainly work for things like this. In my experience, institutions often will adopt your "answer" if you tell them what you want, whereas they will ignore your request for change if you tell them what you don't want--because they don't want to do the extra work of figuring out the alternative solution for themselves.
When I was at college, the college adopted a plan of "forced commons"--requiring the upperclassmen to eat in the dining halls. No one listened to the protest until one student worked out exactly where, and how to build alternative kitchen facilities for the students to cook in (which addressed the legal concerns about students cooking in their rooms), and how to pay for them. Then they built the kitchens, and we were off forced commons.