Google said on Friday that it would not comply with a White House request to reconsider the anti-Islam video that has set off violent protests in the Arab world in light of its rules banning hate speech on YouTube, which it owns.
Google said it had already determined that the video did not violate its terms of service regarding hate speech, because it was against the Muslim religion but not Muslim people.
The company also said Friday that it had blocked access to the video in India and Indonesia because it violated local laws.
These actions came after Google temporarily blocked the video on Wednesday in Egypt and Libya of its own volition — not because it violated laws or YouTube’s terms of service — an extraordinary measure that it said it took in response to the delicacy of the situation. The video is accessible in the rest of the world, even as protests spread to nearly 20 countries, from North Africa to Indonesia.
Google said its decisions were consistent with a 2007 policy for controversial content in which the company would take into account not just laws and its own policies, but cultural norms.
“One type of content, while legal everywhere, may be almost universally unacceptable in one region, yet viewed as perfectly fine in another,” Rachel Whetstone, senior vice president for communications and public policy at Google, wrote in the 2007 policy. “We are passionate about our users, so we try to take into account local cultures and needs.”
YouTube said it was continuously monitoring the circumstances in other countries.
The controversy over the video has raised questions about the role of Google in governing free expression by determining which content is acceptable to show online and which is not.
The company does not police videos uploaded to the site because of the sheer volume involved; 72 hours of videos are uploaded each minute. It reviews videos only if users flag them as inappropriate or if it receives a valid court order or government request to remove them for violating the law.
That was the case in India and Indonesia, which have laws restricting content that provokes enmity.
Also, Google removes illegal content only in the 45 countries in which it has local Web sites, which include Egypt, Indonesia and India but not Libya, Pakistan or Afghanistan.
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