According to German-English website The Local, SoundCloud, a very popular music portal that is found in Berlin, Germany, acts as a host to a number of postings made by Jihadi, or members of the Islamic militant Jihad. According to their The Local’s statement, they have seen a plentiful quantity of Jihadi content posted on some SoundCloud servers, but they were unable to find out the accurate amount as SoundCloud’s tracking system could only count up to a maximum 500 tracks.
The imprints featured ordinary Jihadi images. Some of the examples would be a black flag that represents the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/Levant and the image of men holding up different types of Russian made weapons such as Kalashnikovs. Additionally, popular Jihadi figures such as Osama Bin Laden’s pictures were also posted.
A spokesperson from SoundCloud told The Local that their company had a devoted Trust and Safety squad. This team was apparently the ones who control and are responsible for working with all news of distrustful or unlawful on-site performance, counting the elimination of content that endorses terrorist action.
The posts were an obvious breach of SoundClould’s Terms of Use, which says that it is prohibited to have any content connecting to cruelty, violence or any other kinds of illegal activities, and yet the most famous ones have been working for over a year.
Last September 2014, the government of Germany formally forbids the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/Levant to post such content, this means that any kind of support to the organization is considered unlawful and perpetrators will be penalized.
However, since the Internet is a universal trend, neighboring authorities are under pressure in regulating the content due to the start of cloud-based storage space systems like Amazon’s Web Services platform.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), told The Local that the net is not German made, and many sites that have this aren’t even hosted in the country. They have also tried to have everything removed.
Another spokesperson, this time coming from the Interior Ministry, added that these cases can only be brought against persons who upload things that contain Jihadic content from Germany.
A different Interior Ministry spokeswoman also spoke to The Local, saying that the point of agreement is an action made in Germany so it is not about where the company is located, but where the servers are placed.
It is now expected that SoundCloud would be a safer and better place for its users and members.