BYU continues to block YouTube
Posted in Educationon Oct 16, 2007
By blocking YouTube, BYU is prohibiting students from accessing great video content. For example, recently The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the sponsoring organization for BYU, has published public affairs videos on YouTube that show Church Leader Elder Ballard explaining church beliefs. Students trying to access this content from BYU campus Internet are blocked from the site.
Other educational materials are also on YouTube. Recently, UC Berkeley started posting full lecture videos online. So far, they’ve posted over 300 hours of video taped lectures online for free access to the public. These lectures could help BYU students supplement their own studies, except that BYU blocks the UC Berkeley’s YouTube site.
BYU’s efforts to block video content come in addition to Google’s own safe-search program anyway, which limits access to inappropriate “adult” material. Why does BYU feel they need to be extra restrictive about YouTube? When does blocking bad content at the consequence of blocking good content go too far?
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8 Comments
Jacob’s Blog » My name isn’t Jacob Peargrove
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:07 pm
[...] about this blog. You are also free to read some of my comments about campus homelessness or BYU YouTube bans. December 3, 2007 at 3:55 pm Categories: General No Comments yet [...]
Giant Peach
June 24th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
They are just doing it because they can. If this were Texas A&M, Baylor or any other school it would probably effect enrollment to the point that extra bandwidth would not justifiable its self financially. However, BYU knows that that LDS students have to come to BYU if they want Book of Mormon classes, clean living environment ect..
Jacob
February 4th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
@Giant Peach – LDS students can take Book of Mormon classes at LDS Institutes of Religion which are located near most major campuses in the U.S.
Nicole W
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
Hmmmmmm I just want to add my POV… A LOT of guys at BYU get their porn from youtube. It isn’t an xxx sight, and they don’t have to pay for it. It’s an easy way for them to get all they want and not have anyone find out. In my opinion, BYU was better off without youtube, and I wish they hadn’t started allowing it again.
Jacob
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
@Nicole – Much of what you said could be said about the entire Internet. Imagine: “A LOT of guys at BYU get their porn from the Internet. The Internet isn’t restricted. It’s an easy way for them to get all they want and not have anyone find out. In my opinion, BYU was better off without the Internet, and I wish they had never allowed it.”
Nicole W
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I still disagree, BYU does the best they can to keep things as clean as they can by blocking certain sites. While I can understand them deciding to allow youtube again, I personally feel that they were keeping things cleaner without it.
Donald
January 16th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Since YOUTUBE continues to refuse to provide any filtering options whatsoever, BYU is fully in rights and I think responsibility to block it. Unlike Google images or video, a user cannot decide what type of responses they can expect to see when they search youtube for “your search here” and thus very inappropriate content will post right along side the most innocent. I don’t think anyone is trying to force people into what they can or can not see, but for a school internet, especially a religous school internet they should be able to guarentee to their students protection. If a student desires to use the internet for seeking out bad content, they have hundreds of options to use that free choice without expecting BYU to sponsor it.
Dude
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:07 pm
YOUTUBE DOES NOT HAVE PORN!!! Doesn’t anyone realize this? It is removed by Youtube.
Is it blocked right now?
Does BYU block things like Hulu, fox, abc, NBC, and Netflix? Do they block these things on on campus housing? If they do, I am almost considering on choosing another college, at least not getting on campus housing.
How about Xbox Live?