Turkey blocks YouTube, part II

Turkey has once again blocked access to YouTube for allegedly badmouthing the country's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. According to local news reports, anyone trying to access the site is getting a message in English and Turkish explaining it has been banned under a 17 January Ankara court order. Turkey last March …

[Nick Fisher]

Nice one

Considering the unadulterated tripe that exists on YouTube, is it too much to hope that the UK govt will be following Turkey's lead?

[Eddie Johnson]

Other than the freedom issues

I'd like to see the US ban the site too. Its already banned anywhere I admin.

Actually though it makes candidate interviews easier. "Do you use MySpace or YouTube regularly? NEXT!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Letter from Google

Dear Turkey,

Look - you don't contribute much to our userbase - and to be honest, we're sick of your moaning about the content. So f**k you. Infact, we are now banning you from YouTube AND Google, how do you like them apples Turkey??

Yours truly,

YouTube (and Google).

[milan]

@ Anonymous Coward

That's just what I'd like to see.

Although youtube is ocassionally useful for the odd funny video (and of course getting rick roll'd every damn time I visit a forum). I'm not a big fan.

Permanently block access to google and youtube (and anything else they control) to any IP originating from Turkey.

[Anonymous Coward]

don' be hatin'

"Dear Turkey,

Look - you don't contribute much to our userbase - and to be honest, we're sick of your moaning about the content. So f**k you. Infact, we are now banning you from YouTube AND Google, how do you like them apples Turkey??

Yours truly,

YouTube (and Google)."

Hey hater!!!!

Well, what do you call as "Turkey" here ?, if it is the users from Turkey, they in fact do contribute to Youtube and use Google very much and some works @ Google as developers. I am not sure what you mean with "f**k you" statement ? This is a government decision, like similar ones in Europe and Thailand. No need to get frusturated withh Turkish users...Stop hating bro'

Relax... don't do it.... when you wanna hate......

signed

another coward

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Anonymous Coward

"Permanently block access to google and youtube (and anything else they control) to any IP originating from Turkey."

Well that would help Turkey accomplish its goal and silence anyone trying to post critical comments to the world - also make it somewhat more difficult for anyone inside Turkey to find them.

-another AC

[Bob]

Sigh

I really should find it amusing when people completely miss the irony in a statement and get all hot and bothered defending their cause of the minute but its just quite sad in truth.

[p]

Freedom of hate ?

Quote: "Well that would help Turkey accomplish its goal and silence anyone trying to post critical comments to the world - also make it somewhat more difficult for anyone inside Turkey to find them."

OK....Analytically thinking, the reason for the ban is not for the "critical comments" but using defamation or insulting languages used in content for Ataturk.

I simply see by "critical thinking" that, when one calls Ataturk with strange titles as "gays", "molesters", "f**k", so forth, he/she aim is to attack not to Ataturk but Turks who cherish Ataturk....Then why attack Turks and make them frustrated ? What is the gain from this?

In the glorious West people are taken to court and sued, and forced to pay millions for doing the same things. Unfortunately, internet has no ethical enforcement on users. Therefore, it become necessary by governments to implements bans (unfortunately).

So, in this case, it is not the Turkish Government to be blamed, but users who utilize the Internet to attack Turkish people.

Otherwise why on earth any youtube user would post contents that attack to someone who dies 80 year ago, but to express his racism against Turkish people. An those who tolerate this type of racism are themselves racist hiding behind the notion of free speech.

Lets get logical..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes!

This should be extended to all groups that won't shut the hell up and grow up.

So, essentially any nation/religion that can't use the internet without spouting their political/idealistic bullshit should be banned.

Wikipedia would be better off with a similar policy, too. Pity there isn't a standard range of IP addresses just for 30-year-old virginal basement-dwellers.

Yours flame-baitingly,

Anon.

[Shell]

disrespect

It's for the Turks to protest, and if they find the banning by their government unwarranted they have the power to do something about it - we're not talking some backwards 3rd-world country with no rights here.

Turkey is a modern secular country, culturally (in the large cities anyway) not unlike any other European country. They have just as much freedom of press, and speech as anywhere else. While personally I find the banning of YouTube pretty dumb, I'm not Turkish, and I don't live in Turkey, but I do know the level of respect Attaturk garners with the majority of Turks. In some ways Turkey is closer to the East than the West; they still respect their history, family, and are fearlessly patriotic, balanced with the open multi-culturism of say, Paris or London. It's hard for an outsiders to grasp the disrespect that these videos cause. I'm not a fan of censorship though, but at the same time you need to respect their culture. Who are we to say what they can and cannot do?

[Wyrmhole]

Meh...

It seems like Turkey bans and unbans YouTube almost every other week. It long lost its newsworthiness IMO.

By the way, as usual, the "ban" is just DNS "poisoning". If you set up your own DNS server on your computer then you can access YouTube, Pirate Bay and everything else you want.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whodunit

There seems to be an assumption that the insulting video was produced by a non-Turk. Is that the case?

-ac

[Jergosh]

@Shell

You're contradicting yourself, I'm afraid.

[Duncan Power]

Should Ataturk himself be censored?

If the purpose of the ban is not to censor criticism but "hatred" of Turkish people then perhaps Ataturk himself should be censored within Turkey, given that a great many Turks are also Muslim:

"Through the abusive interpretation of ignorant and filthy priests ... Islam, this absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, is a rotting corpse which poisons our lives."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk

[Anonymous Coward]

block sites, nationalists

Lots of countries operate systems that block materials they find culturaly offensive. The UK for instance operates a system called cleanfeed, which mostly filters out kiddy porn, and may be extended to filter for "terrorists".

Although its a bit strange to see insulting videos about the turkish equivilant of churchil being filtered like CP, a lot of governments and countries get a bit like this.

I guess its insecurity. In a country where people are (taught to be?) quite nationalist, the things they get upset about are the things that they are say are the case, but know might not be. crazy nationalist Americans get much more upset when you say "you killed all the natives and stole their land" than if you say "your army cant fight shit" because everyone's seen rambo, and we know which way the winds blowing. Same with Atata Turk, and (unrelated) the armenian thing.

??

[Anonymous Coward]

I was unhappy before I read these comments...

...and now I'm even less happy.

Funny how many people are confident enough in their own superiority to say, "I support censorship! Here are the things I think should be censored! Clearly, were censorship to be implemented, it would be *these* things censored, and not ones I would prefer *not* be censored!"

Or, "Free speech is well and good, but free speech shouldn't extend to THIS!" Well, who the hell gets to decide? Why is it YOUR particular pet peeve that deserves censorship, and not mine? What happens when there's a Coup D'etat in Turkey and the new guys decide that Ataturk was a *bad* guy, and they censor YOU? Are you going to stand up and support that, too, when the shoe's on the other foot?

@p, the entire POINT of free speech is to ensure that person A can say something that person B disagrees with. Your argument is that you're person B, and therefore person A should be silenced - but that policy doesn't give you free speech. It gives you freedom defined by whoever's running the censorship committee.

Ah, screw it... there's no point. This sh*t makes me so tired... so, so tired...

[Morely Dotes]

Protest against Turkey

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk killed my dog!

[lglethal]

Why ban?

If the turks (or more specifically the turkish government in this case) are so offended by this video(s) they can ask Youtube to take it/them down. Very simple. Happens all the time.

Banning it just removes a place on the internet for the Turkish people to communicate with the rest of the world and isolates them a little bit more. Such acts speak more of over reaction and attempts to inflame the situation then acting reasonably and addressing the real issue.

PS Making a big fuss about it, just highlights your weaknesses for those that want to insult Turkey.

[Roy Gamsgro]

@David Wiernicki

Well said! Well said indeed.

I salute you, sir. /salute

[necro]

warned about videos

Turkish goverment warned YouTube about the videos. but youtube blinked again so they banned.

have you ever seen a Turkish guy making fun about european or american's history or heroes??

[Renton]

@ necro

"have you ever seen a Turkish guy making fun about european or american's history or heroes??"

Yes, I have. You can find about 500 videos about "how gay the Greeks are". Being a Turk myself, I can say Turkish people are never slow to reply anything insulting. Sadly, the replies, more than usually, are lower than the original insults.

[necro]

@Renton

read carefully, i said heroes or history. in case they make videos called "gay Turkish army" but we didnt blocked YouTube but Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is important for us. you can see his photos on moneys, goverment offices or everywhere in Turkey.

by the way YouTube unbanned in Turkey

i'm repeating if youtube was delete videos when Turkish goverment warned them there werent be bans.

and @milan

"So f**k you. Infact, we are now banning you from YouTube AND Google"

wispy man's huge words.. google need Turkey more than you think

thanks for all