Congratulations to LiveLeak. Their decision to pull Fitna turned out to be a temporary pragmatic move that was soon reversed after taking appropriate precautionary measures. At the time, accusations of cowardice were understandable and perhaps even appropriate, but it has turned out that LiveLeak was merely turning back, as it were, to make sure they had enough Twinkies and Red Bull, and not simply to hide and cower like so much of Britannia already has.
Their statement quoted here:
** 30/3/2008: Liveleak Update **
On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film “fitna” from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don’t consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.
**Addendum 2008/4/9 **
The posted version of Fitna has been pulled from LiveLeak, now concerning copyright considerations regarding the display of Kurt Westergaard’s Muhammad cartoon.
