Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Warwick Rowers — Just Not On YouTube

Without notice a few years back, the team that has posed nude for calendars denouncing homophobia, the Warwick Rowers, were dismissed without warning from Google Checkout’s payment processing service after claims they were “pornographers” were found without merit on appeal. Now it’s happened again, with Google’s Youtube site.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, has concluded that the rowers’ nudity supersedes their anti-homophobia campaign, on the grounds that viewing their unclothed rumps is too much for younger viewers.

According to spokesmen for the rowers and producer/photographer Angus Malcolm, this follows after the Warwick group charged that a Google user was illegally sharing the rowers’ charity fundraising content. The rowers contend that after they lodged a complaint, Google twice rejected their appeals for help, then ended the business week with Warwicks’ “making of the calendar” video content still posted on the site. Both Youtube and Google allegedly remained silent until after the rowers threatened legal action. “And these are the guys who promise to do no evil,” one rower opined. “That’s not been our experience at all.”

See for yourself. The video is meant to be hot (it is.) It’s also meant to not offend anyone at all comfortable with the human body (it’s far from salacious, and there’s no visible junk anywhere to be seen). The Rowers have put their video up on Vimeo and provided the following link: