In a post on its official blog, YouTube has responded to Senator Liberman’s request to remove certain videos produced by terrorist organizations.

On Monday, Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, called on Google to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The videos – readily available on YouTube –show assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, incendiary speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and other material intended to encourage violence against the West, the senator wrote in a press release.

Senator Liberman has sent an open letter addressed to Google CEO, Eric Shmidt, about this issue. “I ask you, therefore, to immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube. This should be a straightforward task since so many of the Islamist terrorist organizations brand their material with logos or icons identifying their provenance. In addition, please explain what changes Google plans to make to the YouTube community guidelines to address violent extremist material and how Google plans to enforce those guidelines to prevent the content from reappearing,” the senator wrote in his letter.

In response, the YouTube Team said on the blog that they have examined and removed a number videos from the site, primarily because they depicted gratuitous violence, advocated violence, or used hate speech.

Though, not all the videos were removed, because YouTube decided “they do not violate” the site’s Community Guidelines.

“We appreciate Senator Lieberman alerting us to videos that violated our policies -- and encourage our users to continue to do the same through the flagging tool. And while we disagree with him about the details of our policies, we respect his views and thank him for giving us the chance to respond to his concerns,” wrote the YouTube team on their blog.