The answer is we do not proactively review in a human way— (House of Commons, 2008, Ev121: Q302
YouTube’s staff does not pre-screen the content before it has been uploaded online, in the same manner as they do after it has been flagged. “(…) a rule that would be effectively trying to pre-clear or censor content before anyone could post something to the Internet. I think we would have concerns with the latter.” (House of Commons, 2008, Ev121: Q275) In the report, which advises pre-screening, YouTube expresses their concerns on many occasions on the matter of prior constraint of the content. When asked the difference between pre-screening and reviewing after content has been flagged, Mr Walker answers:
If you try to take that vast amount of content and pre-screen all of it, it is neither efficient nor effective and would burden the process of creation. Think of the delays that would be occasioned between the time you tried to edit a document or post a comment and some days later when it would appear online. It is a very different model to anything the Internet has ever had. (House of Commons, 2008, Ev 121: Q 300)
Whether it’s impractical to pre-screen the content or this would restrict free expression, both these reasons are given by mr. Walker in the evidence. Not to mention it would create an environment that is very liable for censorship. Which we were reminded of in 2004 when video-censoring through broadcast delay became an issue after the so-called Nipplegate incident in 2004. Broadcast delay is an intentional delay in the broadcasting of live shows to filter out profanity or other unwanted recordings in the actual broadcast. Which can be regarded as a form of censorship. From that point of view, I strongly agree with Mr. Walker against pre-screening.
Interesting enough, Mr. Walker does not mention the liability for the content as described in the previous mentioned OCILLA. Which states as one of the conditions for a OSP “not [to] be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider— (A)(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing” Which makes up for another reason not to pre-screen the content before it is uploaded, because it would make YouTube directly accountable for copyright infringing content. It is said that this works in another way in favor of YouTube as well, because OCILLA’s clear process allows them to avoid making decisions about whether or not material is actually infringing. This is not entirely true however, because the staff of YouTube still has to make these kinds of decisions when screening flagged videos.
In answer to the repeated question whether it’s true that YouTube doesn’t employ a single person to pre-screen the content, Mr. Walker states that YouTube sees this as the wrong approach and compares this to asking a telephone company to monitor phone calls;
(…)Here again I think trying to create a model which turns the Internet into a monitored broadcast medium where everything you want to post to YouTube or MySpace, whether it a comment to a blog or a blog itself or even your email which goes out to 100 people, should have to run through a filter before it is made public— (House of Commons, 2008, Ev 121, Q 312)
YouTube does have “automated tools which review material to see if it has been previously flagged and will stop its reoccurrence.” (House of Commons, 2008, Ev 121: Q303) “(…) there is some automation at the back end to make sure that once posted something does not get reposted. That automation then comes back to the front end again. If a user posts something that has previously been pulled down, that would be blocked initially and will never go up.” (Ev 121: Q298) And YouTube is “working very hard on various forms of automated filters” (Ev 121: Q305) and “on additional software tools to identify material such as pornography and prohibit it on the site. If we can recognize that and hold it until it can be reviewed, that is something we continue to look for.” (Ev 121: Q298) “In some cases I believe some of these filters are already being used to identify pornography content.” (Ev 121: Q306) Insight on how these filters work exactly is not given, but a tip of the veil is revealed when the chairman suggest filtering the content on keywords to decrease the amount of data that would need pre-screening. Mr. Walker takes the suggestion in account, but also explains that only filtering on keywords is not effective for it would also filter out a comment on ‘Sex and the City’. He does not mention the fact that users do not always tag in accordance with the actual content. He does mention other criteria for filter signals;
“At the end of the day, I think we all agree that the goal is to minimize the amount of controversial material that is on the site. What is the most effective way to do that, not the least expensive, but the way that is best for the user experience, to block it? It may be that some combination of an analysis of the material that is being uploaded through technological tools, an analysis of the labels that are going on, an analysis of the history of the user if they have previously posted problematic material but not so much that their account has been suspended and an analysis of how many people were viewing an item or have viewed other items in the past. We take a lot of different signals data into account. Certainly it is a fair suggestion and it is one we will continue to look at.” (House of Commons, 2008, Ev 121: Q315)
This sounds very acceptable, but it also means that all this data needs to be stored for analysis. That is a lot of data on a lot of users, which raises the concern of privacy. This concern was justified when US District Court Judge Louis Stanton (in the copyright lawsuit of Google vs Viacom) ordered Google to hand over the YouTube viewing records; containing both the IP addresses as well as the login names of YouTube users.
On one hand, we have reached a point at which we cannot go without automating parts of any regulation system seen the amount of data it involves. On the other hand, taking away the human reasonable intellect in these kinds of systems would be a very scary thought.