YouTube is blocked in Thailand again. The reason: a video mocking the Thai king, which can be seen over at Mashable.

YouTube being blocked in this or that country is hardly news any more, but this time there is an interesting twist to the story. According to some reports, the ban has come only after Google refused to remove the offending video, claiming that they don’t find it offensive.

Profy claims that this is reckless behavior on the part of Google and YouTube, which calls for “careful thought and correct action on the part of YouTube”. From my point of view, the story goes in two directions, based on one very important detail:

Has YouTube refused to remove the video after they have been officially contacted about it by the Thai governemnt? Or have they simply decided (perhaps after some initial complaints) that the video is not insulting to their standards?

If the answer is the former, then I agree with Profy. YouTube should respect (or at least carefully consider) requests from entities such as governments. It does raise a number of ethical questions, because not all governments and leaderships are the same (North Korea would be one example of a country which could have ludicrous requests which should probably not be honored).

But if the answer is the latter, then it’s equally important to point out that YouTube is in the business of social networking and video sharing. They should not and probably cannot judge on whether videos which their users created or posted are offensive to everyone’s standards. Google and YouTube is a US-based company, and as such they have a set of standards for what is insulting, not only for the US, but for other countries as well. But expecting them to know exactly what’s offensive to every government, leadership, religious group, or any other entity out there and remove those videos is ludicrous.

Just as it is ludicrous to expect they can check each and every one of the videos they host for copyright issues.