a youtube for human rights (22.024545601240337 , 96.15234375)
The coverage of the recent and continued protests in Burma, shows just how powerful amateur footage can be. In a country closed to most journalists and censoring news, the amateur is often only way people in the outside world can see what's going on.
Witness is a human rights organization dedicated to helping people use technology to record and document human rights abuses. They do a ton of work making sure the equipment gets out to the people who need it and make sure the footage is seen. It therefore seems a logical next step that Witness would bring all this content together in one central location. To do this, Witness just launched The Hub, which is kind of a YouTube for human rights. The CGM conversation has mostly been about people doing things to benefit corporations or photography that big media has access to.
There's clearly another side to this where amateurs document situations of abuse that under normal conditions would never be captured.