Overturning a previous decision, YouTube decided on Thursday to remove a series of music videos degrading Taiwanese women after angry reports from the Taiwanese public and media.
Over the past months, a YouTube user who dubbed himself "Handsome Hong Kong Guy" (香港帥哥) had uploaded a series of music videos titled "Dirty Ditty" (粗口歌) on the YouTube Web site.
The music videos of several well-known Taiwanese folk songs included lyrics that had been changed to make derogatory comments about Taiwanese women.
Despite complaints from other users, YouTube had kept the music videos on its site over the past month, citing freedom of speech.
On Thursday, YouTube said that while it does not comment on individual videos, unsuitable content is reviewed based on reports from the Web community and removed if found to violate YouTube's terms of use.
Although YouTube declined to respond when asked whether the videos in question had been removed, users found that while searches for "Handsome Hong Kong Guy" or "Dirty Ditty" displayed results, but further attempts to access the contents loaded messages indicating that the videos have been removed due to violations of the site's terms of use.
YouTube is an internationally renowned video sharing Web site with millions of uploads daily.
In April of this year, videos ridiculing the king of Thailand caused public outrage and the Thai government officially requested the removal of the offensive videos. YouTube acquiesced.
In July of this year, YouTube also removed videos featuring someone singing songs degrading to Korean women in a Seoul metro station after complaints from Korean users.
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