Type of site Video sharing Owner Unknown | Available in English Area served Worldwide | |
Founded 31 October 2006; 10 years ago (2006-10-31) | ||
LiveLeak is a British video sharing website that lets users post and share videos. The site was founded on 31 October 2006, launched as a tamer version of the Ogrish.com shock site; it aims to take reality footage, politics, war, and other world events and combine them with the power of citizen journalism. The site is estimated to be the 966th most popular website in the world as of July 2016. Hayden Hewitt of Manchester is the only public member of LiveLeak’s founding team.
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Controversy
The website has been the subject of considerable debate, largely because of its explicit and political material. It gained significant attention in 2007 after it unauthorizedly filmed and disseminated footage of Saddam Hussein's execution. This incident led to the site being mentioned by then-White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
On 30 July 2007, the BBC programme Panorama broadcast a show about how young people were getting physically assaulted and knocked unconscious. When Panorama queried the "extremely violent videos" that had been posted to LiveLeak's website, co-founder Hayden Hewitt refused to take them down, stating, "Look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we're going to show it." LiveLeak states there are relatively few such videos on the site and should the uploaders be found to have participated in the violent attack or filmed it themselves, it would aid the police with any prosecutions.
LiveLeak was again in the spotlight in March 2008, when it hosted the anti-Quran film Fitna made by Dutch politician Geert Wilders. LiveLeak holds to being strictly non-biased in its approach to members and their content, believing in freedom of speech within the site rules regardless of how certain content might offend them personally. Fitna was taken down after threats were made against LiveLeak staff, but was back online on 30 March 2008 after LiveLeak reportedly improved security. The video was once again removed two days later on 1 April; this time it was removed by the user citing that it was taken down due to copyright wrangles and a new version would be uploaded "soon."
A video of US journalist James Foley was posted by Islamist fighters on YouTube before, as reported by U.S. News & World Report, "YouTube deleted it and demand for the LiveLeak version soared." In response to that video the leadership of the website declared that they would not host any "further beheadings carried out by IS." The website will continue to host the original video that depicts the aftermath of Foley's execution.
Features
"YourSay" is a section of the website where users upload their own videos, much like a vlog. Unlike YouTube, the vlogs on LiveLeak are more political and are known for debate.
LiveLeak currently has multiple categories including Syria and Ukraine, in which graphic content regarding various conflicts can be viewed.
Partnerships
On 24 March 2014 LiveLeak and Ruptly announced a content partnership.