You may shoot on impulse with your digital video handycam and rightly record evidence, but before uploading on YouTube, beware of the law. A Dubai resident of Indian descent, who empathised his fellow compatriot who was being assaulted by an Emirati official, was arrested last month in Dubai for uploading the video of the incident that has now gone viral.
The video shows the official repeatedly hitting an Indian van driver with his head chord and punching him. Outrageous indeed. But he ought to have been well advised to file a complaint with the police or the court with a copy of the shoot and not go for janta (public) justice. It was good as evidence, but within the confines of law.
The 22-year-old Indian who recorded the footage and posted it on YouTube is being questioned, according to 7Days, a local UAE newspaper. The young man was obviously shocked by the vengeful and violent scenario, and wanted to record the scene to report the incident, but unfortunately did not consult a lawyer and got arrested as a result!
Dubai Police claimed that the official’s family had complained that the video maker defamed their relative and filmed him without permission. The Emirati government official accused of carrying out the assault has been referred to court as the young Indian intended. Witnesses said that the Indian driver had accidentally hit his attacker’s Lexus SUV. The recording went viral, with many viewers reporting it to the police and urging the force to take action. General Khamis Mattar Al Muzaina, the deputy director of Dubai police, reportedly said: “They (the official’s family) are accusing him of defamation and insult. No one has the right to record any person without his permission. This man should have presented the video to police to investigate, not put it on the Internet.”
The official is in custody and faces a charge of minor assault. But what an irony. The video-maker faces a defamation charge carrying a sentence of a possible two years in jail with a maximum fine of UAE Dirham 20,000.
Apart from the aforesaid example, beware of certain other ‘watchdogs’. The advertising watchdog has banned a Renault advert featuring scantily clad dancers, ruling that it objectified women.
The YouTube ad for Renault featured young people taking the car for a test drive in London, who find themselves transported to Paris when they push a button on the dashboard labelled ‘VaVaVoom’. Among various stereotypical French scenes, a group of women are shown wearing burlesquestyle lingerie and gyrating around the car and drivers. One woman blows a kiss to the driver; the dancers then walk away to reveal a billboard that reads ‘Reignite your VaVaVoom’.
The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that the ad was offensive and objectified women. Renault UK said that the ad was a parody of French culture and that the dancers were a reference to Moulin Rouge and were not overtly sexual. It added that the video had been watched more than three million times on YouTube and it was unaware of any other complaints.
However, the watchdog said that it was concerned that the ad featured “a number of shots of the women’s breasts and bottoms, in which their heads were obscured, and which we considered invited viewers to view the women as sexual objects”. The Advertising Standards Authority added, “We considered that the ad objectified the dancers by portraying them as sexual objects and that it was therefore likely to cause serious or widespread offence.”
Let me mention here another purported video posting on YouTube of that of Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi in a compromising position with a woman lawyer. The video went viral but was later censored following legal recourse on the grounds that the clip was uploaded purposefully “by motivated interests to concertedly use the social sites for sensationalism and permanent damage”. The Delhi High Court issued an injunction on publication and broadcast of the CD posted on YouTube.
YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005, six months before the official launch in November 2005. The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. YouTube says that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the U.S. The site has eight hundred million unique users a month.
All YouTube users can upload videos up to 15 minutes each in duration. But, the next time, you upload something “controversial”, do consult your lawyer to avoid any future insult. The legal implications need to be enquired into by serious users to avoid perils and consequences of the law.
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