2 years ago
VALLEJO, CA A new Vallejo Unified School District policy banning videotaping of school fights has prompted the popular YouTube to pull those videos from its Web site.
"We're very happy they complied with our request. It was a real black eye for our district," said Jason Hodge, district spokesman and assistant to the superintendent.
Last week, the district approved a ban on "cyberbullying," prohibiting students from taking pictures or recording fights at school. It also bans students from taking pictures of other students without their permission.
"It's a long, on-going saga. Back in April, we learned all these fights were online," said Hodge. "There were fights up there from as far back as two years. It got worse. Kids were staging fights, starting fights with other kids just so they could be filmed and placed on-line."
The day after the policy was passed September 17, Hodge faxed a letter to YouTube asking the site to take down all the Vallejo school fight videos. Hodge said he was aware of about 20 such videos. By Friday morning, Hodge said, it appeared they were gone from the site.
"They never responded to me, they responded to our local newspaper," he said.
YouTube warns contributors about prohibited content through what it calls "community guidelines." In part, those guidelines state," "Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone being physically hurt, attacked or humiliated, don?t post it."
Still, it's easy to find videos of teenagers and young adults fighting. They appear to be some of the more popular videos viewed.
YouTube claims it responds 24 hours a day to any video that's flagged by a viewer as potentially inappropriate or in violation of the guidelines. Violators will first be warned, but after multiple offenses can lose privileges to post more videos, according to the Web site.
