On YouTube, people who express their opinions, so-called "Video Loggers" (VLOGgers), are vulnerable.

It doesn't matter who you are. If you express your opinions on YouTube the time will come, given enough exposure, that you will will attract the attention of someone who will hate you for it.

There is no protection against this. When someone decides that they want you silenced, they can abuse the loopholes in mechanisms that YouTube has put in place to protect children and Copyright holders. These are mechanisms that, no doubt, were put in place with the best of intentions but that are badly designed, almost fully automated and insufficiently monitored so that videos that are flagged for "offensive content" are often destroyed after what can clearly only have been a cursory glance by a reviewer, if a human being was involved at all.

In the past two years we have seen several people unjustly attacked in this way. Copyright claims can be made anonymously. While YouTube do ask each claimant to provide "contact information", they accept anonymous contact through nothing other than an e-mail address.

If YouTube could simply ignore anonymous DMCA claims, this would not be a problem, but DMCA legislation requires hosting sites to respond to any Copyright claim by immediately taking down videos against which accusations are leveled, and the victim, the person receiving the claim, can only respond by counter claiming, a process in which YouTube forces the victim to hand over personal information to what may well be a person with malicious intent hiding behind the anonymity of a throw-away e-mail address. This is an issue of personal safety that has been pointed out to YouTube on several occasions, but that has never been addressed.

Whilst the anonymouse flaggers and DMCA abusers can make their invalid (and in the case of a false DMCA, even PERJUROUS) claims from the safety of their anonymity, the anonymous attacks on VLOGgers lead to what YouTube calls "strikes" on the VLOGger's YouTube account. After 2 strikes, a person's account is suspended for 2 weeks, and after a 3rd strike, a person's account can be terminated. Given that it is so easy to anonymously flag videos or file false DMCAs, this has resulted in a free for all for malicious users intent on attacking anybody they don't like, for whatever reason, safe in the knowledge that there will be no repercussions to them, and leaving their victims looking on helplessly while work that sometimes took years to compile on YouTube is destroyed in a matter of days, with no comeback. There is no appeals process, no way to contact YouTube, no way to seek redress.

This is what has been going on for over two years now, and people have had enough. We have tried to bring this to YouTube's attention for over two years, and YouTube is simply not listening. YouTube is the biggest video sharing site on this planet. If you want your Video Logs to be seen, if you want to be noticed, if you want people to hear what you have to say, there simply is NO viable alternative to YouTube.

As some detractors have pointed out, YouTube is a private company, and as such it would have every right to reject any content on its site at its own discretion, without giving any justification. While this is true, in its community guidelines YouTube commits unequivocally to supporting freedom of speech. It has let its VLOGgers down very badly. And now we are no longer willing to tolerate their failure to listen to us, their failure to communicate with us, their failure to provide us with some measure of protection against this type of abuse.

If YouTube won't listen, we will have to shout harder, we will have to find somebody else who DOES listen to us, and somebody who is able to help amplify our voice so it get heard beyond this site and in the "Real World". Enough is enough. That is why we are looking for journalists who take Freedom of Expression seriously enough to know that this is a serious issue that should not be ignored. That the destruction of civil liberties does not START when Freedom of Expression is taken out of our Western Societies' constitutions, it ENDS there.

It starts by slowly eroding it away, one tiny little bit at a time, by limiting freedom of expression, one public forum at a time, so that every time it happens people would be inclined to respond by saying "it's only ONE place where you are not allowed to express yourself freely, what are you worried about? You can still have freedom of expression somewhere else.

This slowly undermines the liberties upon which our societies are based, until one day you'll find that freedom of expression ends the moment you open your mouth. We are not going to sit back and allow this to happen.

This can no longer be tolerated.

If you are a Journalist, please give this initiative some exposure. Write an article about it in your newspaper. Discuss it in your radio show. Make a TV programme about it. If you are a supporter of this initiative, please think of ways in which this initiative can get the exposure it needs in the "real world". Send it to anybody you may know who is involved in mainstream media. Pass it on. Point them to this site, and tell them about the successes we have had so far. Pass on the petition, share the gdata issues thread. Do what you can.

Please help.