As Expected, Turkey's YouTube Ban Is Back On

from the but-of-course... dept

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.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

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


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:19pm

    "Yeah, don't expect to view much YouTube in Turkey" -- unless your using Ultrasurf.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    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"????

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    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 :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    hmm, 4 Nov 2010 @ 5:07pm

    or...

    Post something offensive about Turkey, but ON THE TURKISH GOVERNMENTS WEBSITE.....they'd have to ban themselves!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    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 :)

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.