Google-owned YouTube has announced in an update of its video guidelines that it will not permit any posts that involve "inciting others to violence," the move comes after pressure from both the US and UK.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) has been especially critical of YouTube in the past for posting videos that supported, or endorsed al-Qaeda and affiliated other Islamic terrorist groups.

"YouTube was being used by Islamist terrorist organizations to recruit and train followers via the Internet and to incite terrorist attacks around the world, including right here in the United States," Lieberman said in a statement.

The standoff between Senator Lieberman—who has gathered significant bipartisan support—and YouTube has forced the free-speech proponents to rewrite their policy.

Leiberman has support from across the pond from John Wittingdale, the chairman of the culture, media and sport committee which conducted a report looking the "Dark Side"of the harmful content on the internet. He cited one specific example of "concern" that involved a video of what appeared to be a gang rape that was viewed around 600 times.

Whittingdale said that YouTube was made aware of the content by a user but it was not removed until a second warning came through.

YouTube, which already bans all forms of hate speech, contends that offensive and violent material can be flagged and removed by users under its exisitng community guidelines if it is deemed inappropriate. The problem for the video-sharing company is that it receives hundreds and thousands of videos on a daily basis and cannot possibly screen every single one and so relies heavily on the community to police posts within the company's community guidelines.

Since both Google and Yahoo have 'adjusted' policies on free speech with it's business in China I'm quite sure YouTube can comply and remove the postings that depict terroist calls to arms and agregious acts of violence here in the West.