Well that didn’t last long. Just days after turkey lifted its ban on YouTube, the site has once again been made unavailable to the country’s 70 million residents.
And all because a handful of videos have been deemed as offensive to a guy who died 70 years ago, when the Internet was a figment of a futurist’s wet dream.
YouTube Censorship
YouTube isn’t exactly new to this banning malarkey, with various countries having prevented its citizens from accessing the Google-owned site over the past few years.
Thailand banned YouTube after Google refused to remove a clip deemed insulting to its royal family. Pakistan then attempted to block access to the site over a video deemed offensive to Muslims. And China has banned YouTube a number of times, most recently over a video showing violence against Tibetan protesters.
Turkey, however, provides the best story of all, with its on/off/on again banning drama playing out like a particularly cheap soap opera.
Turkey’s On/Off/On Ban
Turkey originally banned YouTube in May 2008 after four videos made it onto the site which the Turkish authorities deemed as offensive to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the country.
Google removed the videos from the Turkish site but that wasn’t deemed sufficient, with the courts wanting the videos removed worldwide.
Fast-forward more than two years and the ban was lifted after the videos were removed from the site by “volunteers” working closely with the government who used Google’s copyright protection to do so.
Unfortunately for the Turkish government, Google reposted the videos are deeming that they don’t actually infringe on any copyrights. And so the same court that lifted the ban on Saturday put it back in place on Tuesday (Nov. 2).
Conclusions
This whole YouTube ban is based on four videos deemed to be offensive to a man who has long been in the ground. And for that the Turkish authorities are preventing 70 million people from accessing one of the most popular sites on the Web. Is it me or is this sheer madness?
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