As Expected, Turkey's YouTube Ban Is Back On

from the but-of-course... dept

Wed, Nov 3rd 2010 5:05pm — Mike Masnick

Can't say this one was a surprise. In discussing the lifting of the ban on YouTube in Turkey earlier this week, we pointed out that officials claimed that "common sense prevailed," but they didn't mean the sort of common sense that many of us thought: they lifted the ban because they thought (incorrectly) that YouTube was willing to censor content on their behalf. But, that's not the case, and the video was only taken down due to a bogus copyright claim.

The video has since been reinstated... and so has the ban. The latest ban, however, is not about that same video, but a different video that a Turkish court found objectionable, which gives even more reasons to suggest that YouTube is going to remain mostly banned in Turkey for a long time. Every time someone finds an "objectionable" video, the entire site gets blocked? Yeah, don't expect to view much YouTube in Turkey.

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Filed Under: censorship, turkey, videos, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2010 @ 5:15pm

And now I'm hungry.

For the turkish people they can use VPN's or they can just use some torrents or use other forms of proxies.
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Jesse, 3 Nov 2010 @ 5:23pm

New meme: posting stuff that offends Turkish courts to as many places as possible until the whole country just disconnects its internet connection.
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abc gum, 3 Nov 2010 @ 5:36pm

Certainly there are those with the wherewithal to circumvent this childish silliness. If not, maybe someone in China could help them out.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:19pm

"Yeah, don't expect to view much YouTube in Turkey" -- unless your using Ultrasurf.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:20pm

'Don't expect to view much YouTube in Turkey'...
"Yeah, don't expect to view much YouTube in Turkey" -- unless your using Ultrasurf.
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javabean, 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:46pm

4chan
does anyone know if 4chan is banned in turkey?? if it is we can just start posting /d/ material all over the web. think that would make them "pull THE PLUG"????
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Emre, 4 Nov 2010 @ 6:56am

I'm from Turkey, we, as most of the Turkish citizens, do not want Youtube to be banned, of course. So, do not punish us. We are not happy with the ban. It's just the politicians dirty work, we can do nothing. We change our DNS's to access youtube for a long time. Sometimes, change our hosts file when DNS is not enough.

And youtube has not been banned yet, the court decided to ban, but now Turkish IT will communicate with youtube for the videos to be removed. If not, youtube will be banned again. But this time, I think Youtube will remove these videos, because it is a violation of private life. Because it shows some naughty scenes of one of our political leaders :)
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Hephaestus (profile), 4 Nov 2010 @ 6:56am

Re:
Actually post stuff that offends Turkish courts to as many places as possible, then inform the turkish courts of the offending material and location. We could write a bot that does that and give it to the guys at 4Chan. It would be pretty funny and a huge statement.
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hmm, 4 Nov 2010 @ 5:07pm

or...
Post something offensive about Turkey, but ON THE TURKISH GOVERNMENTS WEBSITE.....they'd have to ban themselves!
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vasile, 16 Mar 2011 @ 7:25pm

YouTube for Turkey
Turkish and other countries can find YouTube on www.fightabuses.eu , website with free access for YouTube.
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Mr Greek, 14 Apr 2011 @ 7:39am

Mr Ataturk
Ataturk WAS gay, he slept with every single man under his command... Turks should be proud they are so socially progressive and ready to fight for LGBT rights by having a GAY leader like Ataturk :)
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