wall street journal
TECHNOLOGY
NOVEMBER 3, 2010, 4:32 P.M. ET
NOVEMBER 3, 2010, 4:32 P.M. ET
By MARC CHAMPION
ISTANBUL—Turkey has blocked access to YouTube again, just days after ending a two-and-a-half-year ban, but this time over a sex scandal video, rather than videos insulting to the nation's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, according to a lawyer for the subject of the video.
The lawyer, who represents the leader of the republic's main opposition Republican People's Party, Deniz Baykal—said Wednesday that Turkish authorities had blocked the site as a result of a Tuesday court ruling in the case.
That confirmation came amid confusion, in which access to YouTube was first blocked throughout the day and then opened again late evening, both Tuesday and Wednesday. Officials at Turkey's Telecommunications Transmission Directorate had warned Tuesday that they might shut the site down again in response to the Baykal ruling, but could not be reached for comment either Tuesday or Wednesday. A spokesman for Google Inc., which owns the site, also declined to comment. The two sides are due to meet later in the week for talks.
YouTube was blocked in Turkey in May 2008, when a court ruling demanded the world-wide removal of various videos considered insulting to Atatürk. Google agreed only to block the videos within Turkey.
Last Saturday a Turkish court lifted the ban after a group of self-described "volunteers" working with Turkish authorities succeeded in taking the four offending videos off YouTube.com, using an automated copyright protection system. The move effectively achieved the court order without Google's involvement.
On Monday, however, YouTube said it would reinstate the videos, describing the copyright claim as invalid. In its statement, the company said it hoped Turkey would nevertheless allow the YouTube to remain open; that proved short lived.
On Tuesday, the court hearing Mr. Baykal's case ruled that YouTube should remove a video clip of him dressing with his lover in a hotel room. The secretly recorded video footage forced Mr. Baykal's resignation when it was posted on Turkish websites earlier this year.
Mr. Baykal's lawyer Muzaffer Yilmaz confirmed Wednesday that the court hearing Mr. Baykal's case ordered access to "the obscene and immoral images" to be blocked.
At its root, according to media analysts in Turkey, last weekend's copyright plan sought to circumvent rather than resolve the core dispute between Google and the Turkish government, namely that Google was unwilling to set a precedent for other governments by allowing Turkey to force the company to remove material world-wide, rather than just in Turkey. The ban has proved unpopular at home and damaging to Turkey's reputation abroad.
Media freedom activists note that Turkey has blocked as many as 5,000 websites, of which YouTube is the most prominent, since new laws governing Internet usage were adopted in 2007. —Ayla Albayrak in Istanbul contributed to this article.
Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com.
ISTANBUL—Turkey has blocked access to YouTube again, just days after ending a two-and-a-half-year ban, but this time over a sex scandal video, rather than videos insulting to the nation's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, according to a lawyer for the subject of the video.
The lawyer, who represents the leader of the republic's main opposition Republican People's Party, Deniz Baykal—said Wednesday that Turkish authorities had blocked the site as a result of a Tuesday court ruling in the case.
That confirmation came amid confusion, in which access to YouTube was first blocked throughout the day and then opened again late evening, both Tuesday and Wednesday. Officials at Turkey's Telecommunications Transmission Directorate had warned Tuesday that they might shut the site down again in response to the Baykal ruling, but could not be reached for comment either Tuesday or Wednesday. A spokesman for Google Inc., which owns the site, also declined to comment. The two sides are due to meet later in the week for talks.
YouTube was blocked in Turkey in May 2008, when a court ruling demanded the world-wide removal of various videos considered insulting to Atatürk. Google agreed only to block the videos within Turkey.
Last Saturday a Turkish court lifted the ban after a group of self-described "volunteers" working with Turkish authorities succeeded in taking the four offending videos off YouTube.com, using an automated copyright protection system. The move effectively achieved the court order without Google's involvement.
On Monday, however, YouTube said it would reinstate the videos, describing the copyright claim as invalid. In its statement, the company said it hoped Turkey would nevertheless allow the YouTube to remain open; that proved short lived.
On Tuesday, the court hearing Mr. Baykal's case ruled that YouTube should remove a video clip of him dressing with his lover in a hotel room. The secretly recorded video footage forced Mr. Baykal's resignation when it was posted on Turkish websites earlier this year.
Mr. Baykal's lawyer Muzaffer Yilmaz confirmed Wednesday that the court hearing Mr. Baykal's case ordered access to "the obscene and immoral images" to be blocked.
At its root, according to media analysts in Turkey, last weekend's copyright plan sought to circumvent rather than resolve the core dispute between Google and the Turkish government, namely that Google was unwilling to set a precedent for other governments by allowing Turkey to force the company to remove material world-wide, rather than just in Turkey. The ban has proved unpopular at home and damaging to Turkey's reputation abroad.
Media freedom activists note that Turkey has blocked as many as 5,000 websites, of which YouTube is the most prominent, since new laws governing Internet usage were adopted in 2007. —Ayla Albayrak in Istanbul contributed to this article.
Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com.
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