Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 12, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
According to media reports on Thursday, search-engine operator Google deleted a video from its Internet platform YouTube in which unknown people made fun of a disabled person in Spain. The operator of the video portal is thereby responding to public pressure and the complaint by the father of the person affected. The 70-year-old from Madrid had called on Google to remove the video. The blurred film shows his paranoid schizophrenic son being asked to dance by unknown people and then laughed at. This public display of the
Although he had already called on Google in June to withdraw the four videos in total, the last of them was not deleted until this week. According to the Spanish Data Protection Agency, the perpetrators face a fine of between 300,000 and 600,000 euros if convicted for recording and distributing the material. So far, however, the perpetrators have not yet been identified. The case had generated major headlines in Spain.
Google’s giving in shows how public pressure could lead to a “victory of David against Goliath”, the Spanish daily newspaper “El País” quotes the father of the disabled victim as saying. He owed this victory not least to the more than 200 comments in which YouTube users spoke out in favor of deleting the videos.
