Yesterday (22nd of August 2023), Trans Safety Network (TSN) received a notification from YouTube that two videos on our channel had been taken down at the request of the anti-LGBTQ+, ultraconservative Christian organisation Family Education Trust. The two videos were unlisted on our channel but embedded in our article "I quite like that violent resistance": Gender critical activist Harry Miller's speech at conservative Christian conference. TSN regards this as spurious. YouTube’s terms of service and copyright law allow for the reproduction of small, limited parts of copyrighted works for the purpose of criticism and reporting on public events, known as “fair use” or “fair dealing”. The use of these short video clips in an article on the speech they were taken from clearly falls under this. We are currently appealing the take down through YouTube.
The email we recieved from YouTube
On the day that TSN received notification of the takedown, we saw that Harry Miller has claimed to have been the subject of a police report in relation to the article. TSN played no role in any police report. As documented in our values statement, TSN does not believe that policing of “hate crimes” or “hate incidents” is a viable solution to anti-trans harms.
Regardless of any police action against Miller, TSN considers the use of YouTube’s copyright system to censor parts of the evidence we use for our article reporting on Miller’s speech to be an attack on our freedom of expression. Transcripts of the deleted videos can be found here and here.