YouTube Bans North Korea's State-Owned TV Channel

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Asian Correspondent: YouTube has blocked North Korea's state television channel, purportedly to avoid breaching U.S. sanctions against the totalitarian state. The Korean Central Television's page, which broadcasts breaking news videos including Pyongyang's nuclear tests and leader Kim Jong Un's outings, now has a message saying "the account has been terminated for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines." YouTube's community guidelines bans harmful, dangerous, violent and graphic content, as well as videos that violate copyright laws or that contain threats and that may incite others to commit violence. According to The Washington Post, the action to terminate the account was taken in November because the North Korean government could earn money from YouTube through advertisements, which would in turn violate a U.S. directive that bans any person or company from doing business with the hermit state.

But muh funny!

[ErikTheRed]

North Korea's hilariously biased and propagandistic channel is amazingly even worse than what we get here for domestic consumption.

Although that may be debatable... it's not like North Korea got lied into multiple wars in the Middle East...

Re:

[Black Parrot]

No, they just get to starve to death and be executed at the whim of a fat midget with a Napoleon complex.

Napoleon would never be caught in that hairdo.

Not my argument

[s.petry]

Now we get less media about the bad behavior of the DPRK and less examples of Government propaganda to scrutinize. The US Constitution was the first to codify a freedom of speech. Nowhere does it say one should or can censor information. Why? The best way to come to good conclusions is to see the bad arguments as well as the good, and the fastest way to come to those conclusions is by having more information available.

Youtube does not have to pay the DPRK for views like it does others, so that is not the issue. This is about showing how "good" censorship is to set the normal for everyone else. Shame on Youtube!

Before posting how Youtube is not Government, notice that I did not say they were. My point is about ideology, not about Government.

Re:Not my argument

[Black Parrot]

Before posting how Youtube is not Government, notice that I did not say they were. My point is about ideology, not about Government.

Then what has the Constitution got to do with it?

Re:

[drinkypoo]

The fine summary has the answer. It explains that this is allegedly being done to avoid falling afoul of law. Either we have free speech or we don't, eh?

Re:

[Bob-Bob Hardyoyo]

There's still the english language version of Rodong Sinmun (The state newspaper) for when you need your Best Korea jollies.

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

Care to suggest what you think would be a credible source, Mr. AC?

[Can't wait to see this...]

Re:

[The-Ixian]

LMGTFY

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd... [google.com]

Re:Please link to a credible source

[Motherfucking Shit]

Sorry, Alex Jones is too busy covering gay tadpoles to write a story about this.

Wrong choice

[Anonymous Coward]

They could have kept any ad revenue in a trust for when N. Korea freed itself from despotic Kim resigm or Korean reunification. Reunification alone will be multi-decade and multi-billion dollar per year project. Think German reunification in steroids. Whole population will need to be unbrainwashed and whole generation of people have to be provided for by the South Korean government.

Question

[Sartr]

So why didn't they just turn off the monetization option on North Korea's channel instead of banning them outright? Not that I'm complaining about missing their horrible propaganda, but this is surely the first step of their plan to remove dissent from the internet.

Or...

[Pfhorrest]

Or they could just demonetize the offending channel if sending them money is the problem? It's entirely up to Google whether or not to send NK money for things on their channel. Not like NK is going to sue them in a US court over it or something.

Re:

[ls671]

Well, then adjust your text to voice software. I didn't see anything pronounced here...

What? Unpossible!

[LynnwoodRooster]

All Glorious Leader! All The Time! He so ronery after all...

That's bullshit

[AndyKron]

That's bullshit. Just turn off monetization for their channel. They do it to other people all the time for lessor reasons. WTF is going on here?

The fight against fake news

[Opportunist]

Ok, I can see where this is coming from, but if propaganda is out now, pretty much every news outlet along with every blogger would have to get banned. What's left is cat videos.

Then again... I doubt it would lower quality noticeably...

Re:

[David_Hart]

Ok, I can see where this is coming from, but if propaganda is out now, pretty much every news outlet along with every blogger would have to get banned. What's left is cat videos.

Then again... I doubt it would lower quality noticeably...

And you don't think that cat videos fall into the same CATegory? Cat videos are all about propaganda. It paints cats in a PURRfect light. But the TAIL is so much more duplicitous, they are pure evil and up to no good... At least, that's what my sister's dog tells me... Them and squirrels...

Re: "doing business"

[dj245]

No. Transportion of individuals and their belongings (your flight in), accommodations for a private individual (your hotel), etc are not mentioned in any of the piles of sanctions. And Americans can, to this day, send money electronically to a tour company based in China and receive a DPRK visa (delivered to Beijing for you to pick up there) in a couple of weeks. Take it from a guy who went there in 2013. "USA has very nice people but we don't like your government" was the attitude that North Koreans came

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The camel's nose is now well into the tent

[hyades1]

This is their move into politics. Like kiddy porn and similar red button stuff, North Korean broadcasting is the far end of the spectrum. But it is a spectrum. I would expect the standards to slowly shift to the point where anything the US fuhrer of the moment deems inappropriate will be censored.

Leave it unbanned

[phorm]

But don't allow the posts to block or censor comments... that should make for fun times.

So lrt. E get this straight

[bn-7bc]

A site thst offer frree (as in beer) hosting and streaming foe videos decides to not offer that free service to a certain (person, urganisation, wharever) and this is news? Ok I'll admit, yputube has (at least to a lot of people) become synonymous with interner video (appart from porn), but tha fact remains "He who pays the bills decides what gets shown, was it lightly that this nk propagand. Hannel recived to many ad dollars or eas youtube actualy footing the bill for distributing nk propaganda?

Re:

[aevan]

Sad. Now I'll never know how Squirrel and Hedgehog ends. The wolves are awesome.