In recent
years YouTube has won millions of hearts in India as a social media platform
especially among women. This is because unlike other social media websites, YouTube
has provided a platform to earn money based upon views and subscribers.
Contents uploaded by users may be varied: it can be home decor, power point
presentations of simplified versions of undergraduate subjects, subject lectures
by professional teachers or amateur subject experts, cooking recipes, Do It
Yourself (DIYs), home organisations, daily routines of home makers, technological
solutions, how to do stuffs etc . Several women have used YouTube to earn money
generated through the revenue that YouTube promises once the user can reach some
criteria like getting 1000 subscribers or 4000 watch hours etc. [1]
YouTube however would not lead the user to create contents that may earn more
watch hours or subscribers. Users may go for market survey to understand which
sorts of videos may attract more views, ,more subscribers etc. mostly new users
including men and women may try to create videos on anything that they feel
proper to share to the world. YouGTube , like Facebook and Instagram has
features for allowing users to create videos for private sharing. This enables
the users to share the video which may be watched only by those whom the
creator chooses. The users may however go for wide circulation of their contents
by not only making the videos public, but also by going live whereby the users may directly communicate
with their subscribers or may share information while live. Even though going Live may be a feature specifically
for improving the relationship between the user and his/her subscribers, live
videos can be watched by the world wide audience even if they are not
subscribers to that particular user. Here, YouTube may not play a vital role to
restrict uploading and sharing the contents unless the subscribers or viewers may flag the content as inappropriate. In short, YouTube may actually provide a wide
platform to share anything including bullying videos, mashed up videos, child and
woman abuse videos, birthing videos, adult sexual interaction videos and so on.
While the adult sexual videos and birthing videos may not be universally accessible
unless the user logs in to his/her YouTube accounts, other sorts of videos are accessible
to all irrespective of age. YouTube however uses the due diligence clause to
escape from any third party liability by providing notification which restricts
children from viewing adult sexual contents or violent contents which may
traumatise children. Hardly this has any
practical implication because children may access these videos by using email
ids which may be created on the basis of fake age , or may even log in through
their parents’ or friends’ email /YouTube ids.
My
attention here is however attracted to the contents shared by YouTubers: I have
been an avid watcher of YouTube since many years now. I have been following the
changing trends of users in uploading the contents. Earlier it was more on
creating mashed up videos which may have the potentials of violating the copyrights.
Such videos have also been silently encouraged by actors, singers and producers
because these actually publicize their work even though it may violate the
laws. [2]
But slowly, the content creators, especially women started becoming reviewers
of products on YouTube as well. This included using of cosmetics, kitchen wares
organisers etc that may be shown in the daily routine videos, home organisation
videos or make up tutorials.[3]
Users
not only get views and subscribers as may be needed for fulfilling the YouTube
monetising criteria, they may also be connected with the brands manufacturing
the products or dealers of the products who may wish to showcase their products
through these non-professional videos. Several urban and rural women home
makers have actually benefitted from this: consider Youtubers like Radhika Real
Vlogs,[4]
or simplelivingwithringlejain[5]
who may be rural homemakers, but may have made a moderate to comfortable living
because of their YouTube videos advertising about different brands including retailer
brands. Nonetheless, these YouTubers may
also be victims of bullying and trolling for the quality of their videos, their
pronunciation, lifestyle and even house decorations.
While
these women may have made a landmark professional/personal achievement because
of YouTube, they may unknowingly violate privacy of their own children or even
spouses or other family members as they may be showing and informing the
worldwide audience about their family members who may not may consent for such
wide distribution of images of themselves. These YouTube videos may also be the
subject matter of bullying and ridiculing the children of such YouTubers since
these may stay on worldwide web for long time. YouTube videos may also create
severe domestic violence for several reasons which include live fights between
spouses which may be captured by third party YouTubers for fun and uploaded and
circulated for getting more views; or airing of grievances by women YouTubers
against the other spouses, without knowing the far-reaching consequences etc.
These videos may attract huge views and opinions, comments in the nature of cyber
bullying and also trolling targeting the YouTuber concerned or supporters of
the same. Consider the case of two specific Youtubers from Delhi, who are
spouses in real life : the wife is a senior YouTuber whereas the husband is a
recent Youtuber: They had severe altercations and started living apart. But this
was not enough: both used YouTube to throw insults and humiliating words to
each other and their teen daughter was allegedly dragged in between. The recent
reports suggested that the teenager girl who was staying with her father for couple of
months after the separation, was beaten by the latter while on live and her
t-shirt was torn in a manner which would show her inner wares.[6]
The girl was beaten because she wanted to visit her mother. This video became
viral as several supporters of the wife started showing the clippings through
their own channels. Some had also informed ChildLine and the police who had rescued
the teenager and sent her to her maternal grandmother.[7]
There are several other YouTubers who
started discussing about incident using the profile name of the husband wife
duo.[8]
While the news report published in the local news media suggested that the
teenager was often beaten by both the parents when they were drunk and she was
forced to come on live which she refused many times, the news clipping did not
mention about the name of the girl and that of her parents as S.21 of the
Juvenile Justice Care and protection Act, 2015 prohibits publication of the identity
of the child in need of care and protection or child in conflict with law. The
provision reads as below:
S.21.
Prohibition of publication of name, etc., of juvenile in conflict with law or
child in need of care and protection involved in any proceeding under the Act.-1.
No report in any newspaper, magazine, news-sheet or visual media of any inquiry
regarding a juvenile in conflict with law or a child in need of care and
protection under this Act shall disclose the name, address or school or any
other particulars calculated to lead to the identification of the juvenile or
child nor shall any picture of any such juvenile or child be published:
Provided that for reasons to be recorded in writing, the authority holding the
inquiry may permit such disclosure, if in its opinion such disclosure is in the
interest of the juvenile or the child. 2. Any person who contravenes the
provisions of sub-section (1), shall be liable to a penalty which may extend to
twenty-five thousand rupees.
Now, let
us understand the scope of this provision in the light of this particular case:
the first subsection prohibits any report including news report, inquiry etc
from disclosing the name, information etc of the concerned child. The second
proviso extends the scope to ‘anyone’ who may contravene the prohibitory scope
of S.21. Seen from the perspective of electronic media and the concept of
citizen journalism, which gives every one right to share information, the term ‘anyone’
may literally include anyone including the good Samaritans who may have wanted
to alert the concerned authorities, share their opinion against such acts of
women and child abuse. Further, note the words “any other particulars
calculated to lead to the identification of the juvenile or child nor shall any
picture of any such juvenile or child be published” mentioned in the first
sub clause. This may include the name of the concerned child and names of the
parents. But apparently, this provision became a just a paper tiger in this
case because those who had watched or subscribed to the videos of the couple
had already known about the identity of the teenager because of the daily Lives
put up by the parents and discussion about the girl in the videos posted by
them. If one visits the comment section of the recent videos of both the
parents in the recent past, it would be seen that commenters have taken the
name of the girl, asked about her whereabouts and in some cases, some had also
suggested about her changed behaviour after she had stayed with her respective
parents separately. Nothing is confidential for those thousands of worldwide audiences
now who had watched the parents daily and who had also witnessed the Live video
where the girl was beaten up by the father. In spite of repeated request by the mother of
the girl, several YouTubers still did not take down videos mentioning about the
name of the father (which broadly falls within the meaning of “any other
particulars calculated to lead to the identification of the juvenile or child”)
when this writeup was published. While the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection
and Act provides a base rule, the concerned YouTubers may not be held solely
responsible because the parents already violated the privacy of the teenager
and encouraged thousands to watch the couple fight which had every potential to
attract penal provisions for using words etc for harming the modesty of the wife
under S.509 Indian Penal Code as well as defamation of both the wife and the
husband under Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code. YouTube on the
other hand has not taken down the videos of either of the spouses or that of
the other YouTubers which may showcase the
names of the parents and the child because it is guided by First Amendment of
the US which may hardly be affected unless YouTube has been approached to take
the videos down by concerned stakeholders.
It is now
a typical love triangle of three parties : YouTube, which is loved by all for
providing such an open platform for airing opinions and consumption of real
life family dramas, the YouTubers who may expect to get support, views,
popularity and money because of participating in the trolling and independent
discussions on such issues which may rip open privacy of general individuals including
children and criminal justice machinery, most of whom may never know how to
manage legalities of YouTube videos because they are completely ignorant of
this new type of electronic media.
But this is
not a unique incident that attracts the attention of legal researchers,
especially privacy law and speech law researchers. YouTubers, especially women YouTubers
continue to violate privacy knowingly or unknowingly and provide more opportunity
to trolls, bullies and offline perpetrators to victimise them because they may
not be aware about the netiquettes of YouTube. Time has come that YouTube users
become cautious of the contents uploaded by them and legalities attached with
such uploading and sharing. In this festive season YouTube content uploading
and sharing may have seen a steep rise. But it is upon YouTubers to control
what must be shared and may not.
YouTube
is more powerful than televisions, more demanded than movies and more
devastating than what is generally apprehended.
Please note:
Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use information
provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2019), " YouTube, YouTubers and violation
of privacy of women and children: The drama unfolds” Published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com
on 28-10-2019
[1] For more, see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72851
[2] For
example see Halder D., & Jaishankar K. (2016) Celebrities and Cyber Crimes:
An Analysis of the Victimization of Female Film Stars on the Internet. Temida -
The journal on victimization, human rights and gender. 19(3-4), 355-372
[6] See
for better understanding of the case in https://www.amarujala.com/delhi-ncr/faridabad/drunk-parents-beat-student-faridabad-news-noi468791969
[7] See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNG3lousHu4&t=167s
where the Youtuber had informed that she called the police to report the video
and provided the link of the media report of the incident.
