Is the Internet making us indifferent?

[Alex Bragi]

“A YouTube video of a mother being gang-raped in her home has prompted calls for tougher Internet laws.

The 25-year-old UK mother went to police last month after discovering a video of her three-minute ordeal had been viewed 600 times on the popular video-sharing website.

The video was only removed from the site at the request of a concerned user.

The mother claimed three teenage boys raped her and then urinated on her after spiking her drink last November.

The woman appears unconscious in the video as she is repeatedly raped. Her two young children are heard crying in another room and the youths are seen laughing into the camera during the incident.

"I was raped on film and you could hear my [two-year-old] daughter and four-year-old son crying," she was quoted by The Times as saying.

"Putting it on the Internet was an abomination… I cannot understand how any website could show such a thing."

Under UK law, sites that host videos posted by third parties must act "expeditiously" to remove them.

Politicians reviewing these laws are under pressure to allow authorities to prosecute sites if they host videos depicting assaults, according to the newspaper.

YouTube said users were prohibited from uploading content showing pornography but claims it is too difficult to review every video before it is posted.

"If the content breaks our terms then we remove it and if a user repeatedly breaks the rules we disable their account," a spokesman said.

Since the mother came forward police have begun investigating the incident and questioned three teenagers. “

Quoted from from: news.nineMSN.com.au, today.

You know, those who know me know it takes a lot to get me angry. I feel that I’m a rather calm person who’s, generally, capable of reasonable, clear and open thinking. This however, hasn’t made me just angry—it’s made me fucking red hot angry!

The crime itself just simply makes me want to vomit—preferably all over those fucking cowardly bastards before I hack their balls off with a rust knife to let the grovel and die in the gutter where they belong!

But what really disturbs me is that not one, not a dozen, not even one hundred, but over 600 people viewed this vile video clip before someone had the good sense and decency to flag it.

History shows us that our morals and standards are cyclical, yet never before have we had so much information available to us. Never before has pornography been so freely available, although certainly this goes way beyond simple (fictional/consensual) porn. So, can or will the moral compass ever swing back?

But is it the Internet per se that’s actually responsible for the deterioration of our morals? Or, is it perhaps the ridiculously lax attitude of those enforcing the laws governing this kind of thing in the first place that’s the problem? I mean, “"If the content breaks our terms then we remove it and if a user repeatedly breaks the rules we disable their account,”... I say, fuck that!! One strike and you’re out fuckwit!!!

(And, another thing, what if that video had been posted on this site, do you really think you'd be sitting here reading this if it had? Yes, size really does matter, doesn't' it?)

Are we, as a society, really becoming so indifferent towards sex and violence that this kind of real life horror is actually acceptable to so many?

And, finally, do you believe, as I do, that these young fuckwits should be castrated?