Free Speech in the Age of YouTube - SOMINI SENGUPTA, NY Times

“We are just awakening to the need for some scrutiny or oversight or public attention to the decisions of the most powerful private speech controllers,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor who briefly advised the Obama administration on consumer protection regulations online. Google was right, Mr. Wu believes, to selectively restrict access to the crude anti-Islam video in light of the extraordinary violence that broke out. But he said the public deserved to know more about how private firms made those decisions in the first place, every day, all over the world. After all, he added, they are setting case law, just as courts do in sovereign countries. Mr. Wu offered some unsolicited advice: Why not set up an oversight board of regional experts or serious YouTube users from around the world to make the especially tough decisions? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/sunday-review/free-speech-in-the-age-of-youtube.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/sunday-review/free-speech-in-the-age-of-youtube.html