Vandalism and violence

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This was published 17 years ago

Vandalism and violence

By Catharine Munro

PARENTS are being warned to monitor their children's viewing of YouTube, the hugely popular video site that is carrying scenes of teenage violence and vandalism.

The NSW Department of Education said home was the most likely place for children to view thousands of files of school fights and graffiti-spraying that can be found easily with a couple of clicks of a mouse.

Last week US internet giant Google paid $2.2 billion in the strategic takeover of YouTube, which has never turned a profit, and gained control of the world's third most popular website.

The secret to YouTube's success was to allow people to easily share home-made video clips with other web viewers of anything from music to the family pet. But it was also the site where it was recently revealed that Australian troops in Iraq had uploaded scandalous images of themselves playing with guns.

An informal subcategory of school fights and graffiti-spraying are attracting tens of thousands of users to the site.

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Many of the violent scenes appear to have been filmed in the United States and Great Britain, with rap music accompanying the abusive acts.

Fighting in Australian schools also features, along with demonstrations of how to spray graffiti on the outside of moving trains.

The site was impossible to access at public schools, an Education Department spokesman said.

"[The department] urges parents to monitor their children's use of the internet at home as this is the most likely place from which students view and download material posted to these types of internet sites," the spokesman said.

RailCorp's Rail Vandalism Task Force is also examining one clip in which a graffiti vandal brazenly opens the back door of a train and sprays the outside of the carriage.

"RailCorp is deeply concerned about distribution of any material that glorifies vandalising public property," a spokesman said.

Adolescence psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said the craze threatened to encourage copycat behaviour and urged all schools to ban the use of camera phones.

"It's nasty stuff," Dr Carr-Gregg told The Sun-Herald. "I have seen some stuff which involved girls kicking each other on the ground, which made me want to vomit. In the background you can hear the person shouting 'I've got it' as they film."

In one clip labelled "catfight" that claims to be from a school in Melbourne, one girl pins another to the ground and viciously beats her head.

"You just despair, really, at this whole internet thing … I think parents have to become more aware and to exercise more responsibility," Dr Carr-Gregg said. "It's our job as parents to regulate."

The massive price Google paid for YouTube reflects how keen IT players are to shore up access to the millions of people who access the site every day.

But the so-called "new media" is proving difficult to regulate.

Websites such as YouTube are not subject to the massive shakeup of rules covering media ownership that was passed in Federal Parliament last week.

As one commentator, Chris Berg, pointed out, companies such as Google and Microsoft did not even feel it necessary to make submissions about the legislation.

"No reform package can stop the migration of consumers from traditional media into more exciting and more flexible formats," Mr Berg wrote.

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