Spain

[ES] YouTube removes five videos denounced by CAC for inciting violence against women

IRIS 2017-2:1/13

Mònica Duran Ruiz

Catalan Audiovisual Council

The video-sharing platform YouTube removed five videos that the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC) and the Department of the Presidency of the Catalan Government denounced for inciting violence against women. The CAC reported on five videos, including Cómo pegar a una mujer (“How to beat a woman”), and 10 blogs, including Dominación Machista (“Male Domination”), El Rincon del macho (“Macho corner”) and La Cueva del misógino (“Misogynist’s cave”).

The 15 videos and blogs were reported to the State Attorney in Barcelona, who has opened investigation proceedings concerning their content. In parallel to the presentation of the complaint, the CAC also addressed letters to the companies that hosted the 15 sexist videos and blogs to report the contents and to ask the companies to remove them. Consequently, YouTube removed the five videos and Google Hispavista removed the five blogs that they were hosting. The company hosting the other five blogs mentioned in the CAC report stated that it would not remove the blogs on the basis of freedom of speech.

The content inciting violence against women had significant viewing figures. The five videos now removed had a total of 228,192 views and four of the blogs had a total of 1,357,940 visitors. According to the denouncement sent to the State prosecutor, incitement to violence against women is considered as conduct that could be constitutive of an offence under Article 510 of the Spanish Criminal Code.

In this regard, the CAC has expressed its willingness to work closely with the Computer Crimes Unit of the Catalan Police (Mossos d’Esquadra) in order to tackle illegal content on the Internet.

Furthermore, the CAC, within the framework of the current revision of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (IRIS 2016-6/3), calls for more tools to monitor the adequacy of the rules contained in both video-sharing platforms and social networks, as the latter are including tools to post more and more audiovisual content.

The report on the analysis of online hate speech against women is the third report prepared by the CAC on risk content on the Internet, after those relating to child pornography and anorexia and bulimia.