LiveLeak is a video sharing website headquartered in London. The site was founded on October 31, 2006, in part by the team behind the Ogrish.com shock site which closed on the same day. LiveLeak aims to freely host real footage of politics, war, and many other world events and to encourage and foster a culture of citizen journalism'. Hayden Hewitt of Manchester is the only public member of LiveLeak's founding team.
History
LiveLeak first came to prominence in 2007 following the unauthorized filming and leaking of the execution of Saddam Hussein. This among others earned the site a mention from then White House Press SecretaryTony Snow as the likely place to see updates or stories from active soldiers. On 30 July 2007, the BBC program Panorama broadcast a show on how street violence between children as young as 11 was being posted on websites including LiveLeak. When Panorama queried the "extremely violent videos" that were posted to LiveLeak's website, co-founder Hayden Hewitt refused to take them all down, stating: "Look, all this is happening, this is real life, and this is going on, and we're going to have to show it." LiveLeak was again in the spotlight in March 2008, when it was hosting the anti-Quran film Fitna made by Dutch politician Geert Wilders. LiveLeak already held to being strictly non-biased in its approach to violent content, enshrining freedom of speech within the site rules, regardless of how certain content can offend. Fitna was taken down for 48 hours as personal threats against Hewitt, peaked. The re-post date was March 30, 2008 after arrangements for Hewitt's family and safety had been improved. However the video was soon removed again over a copyright claim. On August 19th of 2014 a video depicting the beheading of US journalist James Foley was posted by Islamic State terrorists on YouTube and other sites. when it was reported on by US News & World Report, YouTube and Facebook deleted all related footage and implemented bans, increasing demand for LiveLeak's footage as they currently allowed this. In response to James Foley however LiveLeak's policy was updated to ban all beheading footage produced by ISIS." The website will be continuing to host the original video that depicted the aftermath of Foley's execution for its current historical relevance, and because it does not depict the beheading itself. On March 30, 2019, Australian telecom Telstra denied millions of Australians access to the websites 4chan, BigPond, 8chan, Zero Hedge, and LiveLeak as their reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand. At the beginning of June 2020, LiveLeak was temporarily disabling the ability to try and log into the website, and they had also suggested only videos from other sources, like YouTube or Dailymotion. As of 2020-Jun-14, it can be possible to log into the website and view LiveLeak their hosted videos again. Those who do not want to log in to LiveLeak will only see suggested videos that are hosted by YouTube, Dailymotion and vk.com.
Features
"YourSay" is a section of the website where users can upload their own videos, similar to a vlog. Unlike YouTube and Dailymotion, the vlogs on LiveLeak are more political and have been known for debate. LiveLeak used to have multiple categories including Syria and Ukraine, in which all graphic content regarding various conflicts could be viewed directly from the site.
