YouTube's Korea Gambit

On April 1, the government of South Korea began enforcing a new law requiring Web sites that draw more than 100,000 users to verify the identity of anyone who posts a comment or uploads any content onto their sites. This law flies in the face of Google's (GOOG) mandate to provide universal access to information on the Web, but the company doesn't want to give up on the South Korean market. What's a global search and video company to do?

Google's answer was remarkably simple: Eliminate all comments and uploaded videos from its Korean YouTube site. South Koreans can still watch films on YouTube, but from now on, they cannot comment on any films or disseminate one of their own. According to the South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh, the company issued a statement denouncing the law in its characteristically mild language: "Google thinks the freedom of expression is most important value to uphold on the Internet. ... We concluded in the end that it is impossible to provide benefits to internet users while observing this country's law because the law does not fall in line with Google's principles."

In a way, this is merely a blip on YouTube's radar. According to Appscout, Koreans who want to upload comments and video can still do so merely by logging onto a different country's YouTube site. And YouTube commands a very low share of the Korean video Web market in any case. But as ZDNet's Richard Korman notes, it's a nice public relations coup for Google. "This might be a first move at burnishing Google's ethics profile, which has been pretty tarnished by its participation in China," he writes. "We'll just have to see how the company responds to doing business in other repressive countries."