EDITORIAL

YouTube affair out of control

The mishandling of the YouTube affair has again raised the question of the competence of the government. Authorities have escalated a hateful, homemade graffito into an international affair. Armed with a military-backed hammer to employ against the media, authorities have come to treat every problem as a nail that needs bashing. A foreign-based attack on the monarchy has escalated to the world's front pages. The government has banned the popular YouTube site completely, caused the anarchic internet community to produce a dozen new attacks, and now has shut the most popular discussion board inside Thailand. More hammer whacks seem likely to come.

The arrogance of the American-hosted video site YouTube is complicit in this mishandling. The government asked YouTube to remove a hugely insulting video attack on the monarchy. YouTube's director of marketing and global spokeswoman Julie Supan noted that YouTube also hosts scurrilous videos which attack US President George W. Bush. This is breathtakingly insulting. She seems oblivious to the difference between a monarch and a politician. Even more troubling, she doesn't appear to know or care that YouTube has many videos attacking Thai politicians including the current prime minister. No one has a problem with that.

The unfortunate yet repeated comparisons of the Thai monarchy and the US presidency by Ms Supan display a deep and endemic lack of knowledge about the world and its vast differences. But despite this cavalier dismissal of the Thai nation's and government's complaint, YouTube is far from the libertarian, say-anything service that Ms Supan implies. Pornography aside, the website routinely removes tasteless and political videos. Anti-Muslim videos are removed if any viewer complains, not just governments or religious bodies.

Given the dismissive reaction by YouTube to the initial Thai government complaint, one can almost sympathise with Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the minister of information and communication technology. He noted, probably correctly, that YouTube considered that Thailand is just too insignificant to notice.

Immediately after his appointment more than six months ago, the minister began a concerted effort to try to control the Thai internet, both its providers and its users. He has not stopped and his motives are clearly political, despite his constant references to protecting the children.

Mr Sitthichai has made two crucial errors in his campaign to step up and extend his mishandling of the YouTube affair to general internet controls.

He is actually undermining the core support for his government and the Council for National Security, which consists of the anti-Thaksin Shinawatra middle-class. His shutdown of the popular Ratchadamnoen chatroom at Pantip.com will push discussion underground. Worse, he has warned that posters at other chatrooms are somehow violating national security by discussing issues such as this newspaper's revelation of a 12-million-baht anti-Thaksin propaganda campaign by the military.

Mr Sitthichai and the entire government and the military junta supporting him seem unable to get a grasp on today's modern communications. Big internet discussion sites can no more control what is posted than the telephone companies can police what callers talk about, or the post offices can control the contents of the mail they deliver. The minister has failed to discern a key problem: The more that he publicly lashes YouTube and its users for posting attacks on the monarchy, the more such attacks will appear in myriad places. There even is a term for this: ''gone viral''.

They already have mushroomed on YouTube and other such sites, of which there are hundreds. Now immersed in a deep hole, Mr Sitthichai continues to dig. Cool heads _ the government, the CNS or both _ should intervene. The correct public reaction to a foreign-based media attack on the Thai institutions is nothing. The government, businesses and the often cooperative diplomats of foreign countries such as the US State Department can work to eliminate problems like a single YouTube video. Mr Sitthichai has publicised the attack unnecessarily.

Just as importantly, he is alienating most of the educated middle-class who must support the efforts to prepare for a democratic regime.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Tuesday April 10, 2007