Font ResizeNo one has ever been "rick rolled" at Brigham Young University, but that may change after administrators review a policy that blocks the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube from the campus Internet network.
The site -- which includes content generated by millions of users, including the very church that operates the school -- has grown into a potent cultural force since its 2005 launch, offering free access to a dizzying array of video snippets. These include ever-popular, though silly clips such as "Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog," "Hammer Pants Dance," and the Rick Astley video behind the Web's most notorious prank -- the bait-and-switch gag where someone tricks a friend into opening an e-mailed YouTube link to Astley's 1987 dance hit "Never Gonna Give You Up."
Students critical of the BYU policy say much of YouTube's content has redeeming social and educational value, and that the school's unwillingness to allow access is somewhat incongruous for an institution committed to the free exchange of ideas.
"It's a pretty universally disliked policy," sophomore Kevin Blissett said. "Students understand why they block it, to protect the bandwidth to save it for academic material. But it ignores the larger cultural significance of YouTube."
Freshman Jeff Verhaaren enjoys music videos, especially clips of live concerts that are mostly unavailable outside of YouTube.
"It has so much content on it. Everybody uses it," Verhaaren said.
The Provo school's policy has survived even as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embraced YouTube as a vehicle to disseminate Mormon teachings. The church's homepage offers a YouTube link to a 93-second clip featuring a devotional message by church president Henry Eyring.
According to BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins, administrators are re-evaluating the block because of the growing amount of educational material on the site.
"We aren't reviewing this policy exclusively because of the church information," Jenkins said, stressing that BYU students have always been welcome to view YouTube, just not from campus.
While the site features some material that arguably would not belong on a Mormon campus, the blocking policy impedes BYU students' access to clips like "Why Mormons Build Temples" and other Mormon Messages, the church's official devotional videos. They have been viewed almost 3 million times on YouTube, according to church officials.
Speaking at a BYU-Hawaii commencement in December 2007, church Apostle Russell Ballard celebrated the power of the Web to project church teachings and implored graduates to use the Internet "to share what you know to be true."
"We cannot stand on the sidelines, while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the church teaches. Perceptions of the church are established one conversation at a time," Ballard said in the speech, which is available on YouTube. BYU-Hawaii does not restrict YouTube.
Officials at YouTube, now owned by Google and headquartered in San Bruno, Calif., have no idea how many institutions block the site. Users upload 20 fresh hours of content every minute, but it is carefully policed, principally by other users and proprietary software that automatically flags images with excessive fleshtones and other attributes consistent with porn, said site spokesman Scott Rubin.
"We think YouTube is an important forum for free expression. People from ages 13 to 113 enjoy sharing videos and ideas," Rubin said. "We have hundreds of millions of members. We count on them to know our community guidelines and flag questionable content."
YouTube policies bar sexually explicit or violent material, as well as clips depicting "bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making."
"We review flagged content very quickly," Rubin said. "We remove it in less than an hour."
Launched in February 2005 as a place where users could post video clips, the site quickly evolved from a repository of personal vignettes to a marketplace of ideas and cultural material. In 2006, Google bought YouTube, now one of the Web's most trafficked sites.
