Bell Canada Decides To Throttle Traffic Without Telling Resellers

Turkish Officials Never Learn: Ban Slide Along With YouTube

from the the-definition-of-insanity dept

Tue, Mar 25th 2008 1:39am — Mike Masnick

It would appear that Turkish officials don't seem to understand quite how the internet works these days -- despite having received quite a few lessons already. After all, this is the country that has banned YouTube for a sophomoric video making fun of the country's founder. It's the type of silly video no one would pay attention to... until Turkey decided to block access to all of YouTube because of it. Then, of course, this silly little video that no one cared about was seen everywhere. Eventually Turkey lifted the ban, but having learned nothing put the ban back in place not just once, but two more times. Each time, it provided much more attention to the silly pointless videos. Apparently, that message has not gotten through to Turkish authorities who have now banned the multimedia hosting site Slide as well. Again, they didn't bother to inform Slide or even ask the company to take down the offending content. They just banned the entire site over some content that very few people had probably seen.

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Filed Under: bans, content, streisand effect, turkey
Companies: slide, youtube

12 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 25 Mar 2008 @ 2:31am

Maybe we should try to organise a movement to have every website in the world post pictures, videos and text mocking Turkey, just to see if we can get them to block the entire internet.

It'll start off small but we could probably get a load of sites to go for it.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Mar 2008 @ 2:37am

YEAH, A whole country off the net - Bandwidth to the people!
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James, 25 Mar 2008 @ 4:38am

Amusing
I find it highly amusing that many countries all over the world that have functioned much the same way for hundreds of years are being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age because of the internet (well, among other things).

Organized religion, much like communism, breaks down when people have free thought and become educated. Its like we're in the wild west w/the internet, and one day we'll look back and laugh at the some of the comical aspects of the entire experience.

Hmmm.. maybe we can even have a reality/sports show based on all of this, titled, "Who's blocking what this week?" I'm guessing the Chinese and the Iranians will take the top two spots, of course.. but maybe Turkey can go for the bronze?
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Mar 2008 @ 5:08am

Re: Amusing
I feel the requirement to point out that this has nothing to do with the concept of organized religion. Many free-thinking, educated people (ie, people who are fathers of various branches of science) have followed some organized religion. Lets not confuse the abuse of religion with the entire concept of religion. Organized religion did *not* tell them to ban YouTube.

Yes, people use religion as an excuse for a lot of things, but lets put the blame where its due, not on the tool, but the person wielding the tool.
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James, 25 Mar 2008 @ 5:16am

Re: Re: Amusing
Alas,.. you miss my point, I DID put the blame on the tool. :)
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James, 25 Mar 2008 @ 5:59am

(groan)
I hopelessly goofed that up. I did put the blame on the person because the person is the tool. Thanx.
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Rekrul, 25 Mar 2008 @ 6:22am

Can't the rest of the net just ban Turkey? We could send them a message saying "Turkey has been banned for insulting the intelligence of every free-thinking internet user."
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Improbus, 25 Mar 2008 @ 7:08am

Free Thinking
Isn't "free thinking" punishable by stoning in Turkey?
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Overcast, 25 Mar 2008 @ 7:50am

Ban teh whole internetz!!
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TurkishGuy, 25 Mar 2008 @ 10:06am

I live in Turkey and I hate the people who are banning these sites. I hate the idea to act like nobody sees these videos outside Turkey. I just can't understand how our politicians are away from technology and how they can't understand they can not make us blind just banning these sites! Of course, there are a lot of ways to see banned sites, but they do not have right to censor our internet. And in addition to this cencorship, we use one of the most expensive internet connection in the world!

I hate our politicians who made these rules and gave a chance to people to make fun of Turkey!
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InHell, 25 Mar 2008 @ 10:15pm

You cant think different
I was born and raised in Turkey. I left Turkey when i was 21. Now I am 38. More than %95 Turkish are most nationalist people in the world. So i am not surprised that Turkey ban internet just because someone on the street say something anti-Turkishness on the internet.
But I am surprised that there is no one intelligent person in the whole country to come forward to say "Hey we don't live under ottoman Empire's rule any more".
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Mentat, 26 Mar 2008 @ 1:21am

@inhell
Well, they do actually. Secularist gathered a couple of hundred thousand people for that a year ago. But it seems they forgot to mention about internet banning (!) though.

The country has far grater problems than internet now.
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