by Alex Samson

Created on: January 31, 2009

Sadly I won't be the first or the last to utter the following statement: I saw something quite distressing on You Tube yesterday. The video in question made me feel so uncomfortable that I am almost afraid to mention it here for fear that it will inspire a glut of viewings that will boost the ratings. But that's the modern Internet-driven world in which we live. Word-of- mouth has never been so powerful. In condemning something you are automatically promoting it as effectively as if you were praising it.

A colleague and I were hunting around on You Tube for Italian football coverage during our lunch break at work when we came across a clip from a football show during which one of the studio guests actually died of a massive heart attack on air during the live transmission. He was old but not especially old, but was in the middle of what sounded like a rather heated exchange with a guest who had called in on the phone.

I'm not going to name the man who died or the show, those of you in the know will probably guess, because I have come on here to criticize rather than promote. I feel quite sickened by what I saw and often the only way I can get something out of my system is to write it out.

Our initial reaction was a mixture of shock and disbelief; we couldn't quite belief what we had seen, but as the afternoon wore on and memory refused to fade, shock soon gave way to disgust and anger.

I would imagine that watching a loved one die on television is a fairly distressing experience, but to have to live with the knowledge that the footage was somehow leaked and is now available on the Internet for all to view, like some curiosity in a traveling fair, goes beyond distressing, into a whole new category that I can't even begin to imagine.

Before I sat down to write this article I did a quick bit of research and it turns out that this poor man died in 2005. Here we are at the beginning of 2009 and the clip is still available on You Tube. That says to me that there is something inherently wrong in our society. Somewhere something pretty fundamental is broken.

Communications and the Internet are only going to get quicker, easier, and cheaper, and therefore available to more people. The world is shrinking because of the unprecedented impact the Internet has had on global communication. Surely it is beholden to all of us to use this powerful tool responsibly. A clear line needs to be drawn between what should and should not be available for public consumption, particularly with

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