Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt defended YouTube's hosting of an anti-Islam film on Thursday (September 27) which has sparked violent protests globally.

"Google has a fairly clear view of this, which is that we believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech. And we have a very distinct policies about what we accept and we don't," said Schmidt during a news conference at a hotel in the South Korean capital, Seoul.

The 13-minute English-language video, which was filmed in California and circulated on the Internet under several titles including "Innocence of Muslims" portrays the Prophet Mohammad engaged in crude and offensive behavior.

Google has refused to remove the film from its daughter company YouTube despite pressure from the White House and others to take it down from the video sharing website.

"We obviously do not endorse the use of the video or these ideas to incite hatred or violence or anything, but we ultimately believe that the best answer to speech is more speech, not the other way around" Schmidt said.

The company has, however, blocked the trailer in Egypt, Libya and other Muslim countries.

"Some countries disagree. There are some cases where we had to actually block access to that video. And it is a good example of this particular problem," Schmidt said.

Schmidt was in Seoul to promote Google's Nexus 7 tablet computer.