Video in the walled garden

Last week Verizon and YouTube announced a deal that will allow Verizon V-Cast subscribers to stream YouTube videos to their mobile phones: YouTube in deal with Verizon: "Only pre-selected high-quality videos will be available for viewing on Verizon's YouTube channel. Users are also be able to upload to the YouTube Web site after shooting video on a Verizon phone. YouTube, which was founded in February 2005, reports 100 million video views a day."

So Verizon customers will be able to watch only selected and pre-approved YouTube videos, not their friends' latest video, but the ones intended for mainstream audiences. (But also, presumably, not the ones that are copyrighted works or those excerpted from copyrighted works.) A non-neutral internet service would probably look something like this kind of mobile phone internet service-- a pre-approved medium that shares little in common with the freewheeling public internet.

On the other hand, the good news is that the deal seems to be good for individual creators who are using their phone videocameras. It would seem to make it easy for individuals to upload video directly from a phone camera to YouTube. It would make phone video creators able to contribute directly to the freewheeling public internet from their phone. That could make primary source video of newsworthy and interesting events available worldwide almost immediately. That could be impressive.

Does a closed service that lets only selected video into the walled garden but lets everything out into the rest of the world promote free speech or hinder free speech?