The comments sections under videos play a very important role, as they are not just for putting up your opinion, but also for debating with other people who have seen the video. If we watched a video in a room in 'real life', it would naturally spark conversation with the person sitting next to you, but as the internet is a pretty solitary affair (at least in a physical sense) it is very difficult to talk others about what we have seen (within cyberspace that is). Not having a comments section would cut out an important forum for communication and discussion that helps make the internet more interactive.

Also, comments allow the video to be contextualised, rather than just standing in a vacuum - other points of view contrary to that of the video can be read so the viewer has access to the bigger picture. I agree that all commentary should be allowed, even if it doesn't seem particularly valuable at the time (streams of four letter words and cheeky adverts aside!).

I think this is a good question. But quite frankly, I have a really hard time taking the comment section of YouTube seriously. I mean, half of it just seems to be advertisements like you would get in your email. Some of it is e-chain-mail garbage ("If you don't send this video to 2000 people you will have a bad love life for seven years!!!") And the rest of it is just lousy AOL-speak.

I'm not sure if the logical conclusion to this is that it isn't so much what we read, but where we read it, but why doesn't the First Nations community just turn the comment section off? Or just moderate it? Surely newspaper editors have to do this all of the time...

PS: The satire/comedy website Something Awful somethingawful.com had a good mock-up of this. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/youtube-comments-animals.php