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Who made Internet NZ the cyberpolice?

Colour me confused but I'm really scratching my head over this one.

This story that ran on Stuff yesterday has left me baffled and bewildered.

Apparently, Internet NZ copped flak because mid last-year, someone uploaded "a YouTube video containing discriminatory and racist threats".

It wasn't someone from Internet NZ who uploaded the video and Internet NZ has no control over YouTube's operations but somehow, it was deemed that Internet NZ was at fault when the video wasn't removed in a timely fashion by YouTube.

Are you also confused now?

Firstly, Internet NZ is primarily an internet registrar for the .nz top level domain. It is not a cyber-policeman, nor does it have any control whatsoever over .com domains such as the one used by YouTube.

Never the less, Internet NZ seems to be stepping up and taking responsibility for YouTube's failure to pull the offensive video in a timely manner by stating:

WTF?

But it gets worse. It seems that Internet NZ is accusing itself of being a racist organisation for not doing something it has no mandate to do. The Stuff article states:

Bloody hell... talk about play the race card!

Dr Karaitiana Taiuru, co-creator of the NZ Maori Internet Society was also quoted as saying

FFS.

Dr Taiuru also threw some blame onto NetSafe with the claim

Seriously?

Does he *really* think there's some guy here in New Zealand who you can ring and get YouTube issues sorted out over the phone? If that's the case, give me his number because there are thousands of *really* big YouTube channels who'd love access to that guy.

The reality is that even the biggest YouTube channels have no access to "a guy at YouTube" who can sort out issues like this so what are the odds that a jumped-up group of self-righteous "victims" could do any better?

If these guys have a beef then level it at YouTube themselves. If a complaint was filed against the offending video then it immediately became YouTube's responsibility and obligation to deal with the issue. A domain name registrar has no role or responsibility in such matters and to allege that it has shows ludicrous ignorance. About all Internet NZ could have done is shut down all of the .co.nz namespace to try and disable youtube.co.nz but even that would have failed because youtube.com would still work.

Once again we have a bunch of people playing victim at the drop of a hat and then getting into masochistic brow-beating.

I never saw race as an issue on the NZ internet before but it seems that Internet NZ are hell-bent to make .nz a racist domain where accusations are tossed around like rice at a wedding.

Or have I got this wrong?

Comments in the forums please!

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