[NYTr] Media: To See or Not To See Violence

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Alternet - Sep 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/63645/

To See or Not To See Violence

By Annalee Newitz

I did not know the screaming man, nor did I know what country he was
in. My view of him was shaking -- the video was probably taken with a
cell phone or cheapo digital camera with limited vid capability.
Suddenly another man came into the frame and cut out the first man's
throat, which didn't stop the screaming but instead turned it into a
horrible, high-pitched wheezing. Eventually he sawed off the rest of
his victim's head and threw it around a little bit just for good
measure. I had to stop watching, so I killed the tab in my browser.

My first thought was: what the fuck? And then, as the nausea subsided:
what the fuck are these people trying to prove by killing a man like
this? I was hungry for context.

The next day, I found myself asking more questions, but not about the
motives of the murderers. Instead, I wondered about the communications
technologies that allowed me to see that video in the first place. A
group of bloodthirsty guys had to have handheld video-capture devices,
video editing software, and a high-speed Internet connection to upload
the finished product. Then they had to host the video somewhere that
anybody could see it. In this case, that somewhere was the Internet
Archive, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco devoted to the
preservation of history in digital form.

Most of the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) is organized as a
physical-world archive would be: curators like film historian Rick
Prelinger donate rare and antique collections of media that they've
digitized, and the archive makes them available to the world. But
archive founder Brewster Kahle has a populist streak. He believes the
public should have a say in what gets preserved in the historical
record, so he invites the public to contribute. That's why the Internet
Archive has a small area on its Web site called the Open Source Movie
Collection, where anyone can archive his or her media.

Kahle wasn't expecting to host raw war footage when he created the open
source collection. But curator Alexis Rossi says the archive receives
about 30 to 50 Arab-language videos per day that are related to the
Iraq war. "About two or three per week are really violent," she adds.
"They are taxing to watch." Kahle, for his part, wasn't sure what to do
about them. They are undeniably a legitimate part of the historical
record of the war and other conflicts in the Middle East. Watching them
provides people in the West with a rare opportunity to see what Iraqi
groups, including terrorists, are saying about themselves.

These videos don't threaten national security, and they aren't illegal
because obscenity laws apply only to sexual content. So Kahle's worries
are purely about social good. Though these videos form a crucial part
of the historical record of the war, something about them seems just,
well, wrong. Then again, who is to say what is wrong in this case? War
is brutal and deadly -- hiding that fact isn't going to help us achieve
peace.

After agonizing over how to deal with the archive's growing collection
of war videos and consulting with experts, Kahle has come up with a
solution that satisfies both his archivist and populist sides. He's
planning to set up a system on the archive that will allow users to
post warnings about violent footage. These warnings will show up before
other people see the videos; this way, the community can warn its
members not to watch unless they are prepared for extremely graphic
content. Rossi also hopes that the Internet Archive community will get
involved in other ways too. "I'd love somebody to translate some of
these videos for us," she says. (You can find many of the Arab-language
videos at http://www.archive.org/details/iraq_middleeast.)

That warning policy is similar to community-policing systems on the
movie-sharing site YouTube. The difference is that the Internet Archive
-- unlike YouTube -- will rarely remove a video. Kahle is committed to
preserving history in all its forms, even the ugly ones. It's a lesson
he thinks the mainstream media, with its whitewashed coverage of the
war, would do well to learn. If we don't remember the past, we're
doomed to repeat it.

[Annalee Newitz (annalee at techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who
always pays attention to what she's told to forget. ]

© 2007 Independent Media Institute.