YouTube a new battle for schools
By Marcus Timothy,WNS Auckland Correspondent
AUCKLAND - Students from some of New Zealand's top colleges have posted horrific videos of school yard violence and bullying on the internet. The finding comes just days after a homemade DVD surfaced in Australia showed a group of 12 youths surrounding a 17-year-old girl with a mild developmental delay, bullying her, urinating on her and setting her hair alight.The school yard videos taken in New Zealand show two Tauranga Boys' College students fighting.Another student filmed it and then put it on YouTube for the world to see.
"It shows an episode in our playground that was unsatisfactory, that I regret occurred, that I'm embarrassed about...but it was dealt with," says principal Graham Young. But long after the fight ended the evidence lingered. YouTube removed the video on Friday afternoon, but for a month thousands watched it. Another school, Auckland Grammar, features in a number of clips. The principal says the fights were simulated and the school has disciplined those students involved. But schoolyard battles are popular on the internet and there is little schools or the victims can do. "The victim has the opportunity to take a civil action for breach of privacy but the cost of civil actions would probably be prohibitive," says Netsafe spokesperson Martin Cocker.
YouTube's guidelines say footage of real violence is not allowed and the company will remove it. But with about 70,000 new videos added daily the site's controllers cannot keep up. And without the capacity of YouTube to deal with what is now a worrying global craze, students wanting a bit of notoriety could up the ante."There's a danger is that people in their quest for internet fame film more and more extreme acts," says Cocker. While schools can take steps such as banning cell phones, they cannot control what happens outside the front gates. They are already struggling to cope with mobile phones, text bullying, and websites like ratemyteacher.com, and YouTube is yet another technological trial for schools to overcome.
posted by wnsworld @ 6:53 PM
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