Write to the Point: Where is the line with online censorship?

By BECKY THOMAS

Staff Reporter

Last Tuesday, escalating protests were sparked by an American-produced anti-Muslim video in Libya and Yemen. Then, later in the week, Google-owned YouTube made the unusual choice to block the video that sparked the protests, but only in those two countries.

The action of blocking videos is not unusual by itself. Google has a policy guiding the practice: remove content that it considers to be hate speech, that violates its terms of service, or that the court or government ordered be taken down. However, Google said that it does not consider the video denigrating I...