An Unsavory Anniversary of the YouTube ban in Turkey. *Map modified from Wikipedia world map. Turkey – May 06, 2009 was the first anniversary of a multi court order to block YouTube because of videos offending Ataturk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic. Türk Telekom blocked YouTube on March 6, 2007 for showing videos allegedly insulting Turks and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in an escalation of what some have called a "virtual war" between Greeks and Turks on YouTube, with people from each side posting videos to berate the other. The silliness of the ban has most users finding ways to go around it including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who admitted to journalists that he could access YouTube, since the site is still available in Turkey by using an open proxy among few methods of going around the ban [1]
Mavi Boncuk
Source: http://mashable.com/2007/05/30/youtube-bans/
Other silly countries and their silly excuses
Iran and UAE - The UAE, as well as Iran, are blocking YouTube due to their standard censorship of “offensive material”. It is unlikely that their big fat firewall will open up for YouTube anytime soon.
Morocco - Morocco has had YouTube banned because of videos that mock the Moroccan king as well as some pro-Western Sahara clips - until today. For the first time in two weeks, Moroccans can access YouTube again.
Thailand - A similar on and off situation is found in Thailand, which blocks/bans/sues YouTube every time a new clip which mocks their king appears. Thailand has recently lifted the ban, but who knows when it may appear again.
Iraq - Iraq has quite a weird situation: in Internet cafes you can access YouTube, but the US military forces residing there, due to an order from Pentagon, can’t. The ban, which blocks access not only to YouTube but also several other social networking sites, like MySpace (), is still enforced, despite severe protests from YouTube.
Brazil - Brazil, like Turkey, has had a nationwide YouTube ban due to a court order. The offending clip this time was Daniela Cicarelli’s sex stunt on the beach (how you can expect to have sex on the beach and not have it end up on YouTube is beyond us), and this Brazilian model insisted that the clip should either be fully removed (and users stopped from reposting it) or that YouTube should be banned altogether. YouTube was banned for a while, but the ban was removed relatively quickly.
Victoria, Australia (in schools) - Australia is also included here (actually, only one of its states, Victoria) because YouTube was banned in schools there. It’s not really a full ban, but it’s not negligible either, considering some 1600 schools were affected.
China and India - Finally, China and India currently have no active ban on YouTube, but both states have on occasions threatened to block the video sharing website; India because of a video clip mocking Gandhi, and China because of their general policy of banning all kinds of stuff.
Other silly countries and their silly excuses
Iran and UAE - The UAE, as well as Iran, are blocking YouTube due to their standard censorship of “offensive material”. It is unlikely that their big fat firewall will open up for YouTube anytime soon.
Morocco - Morocco has had YouTube banned because of videos that mock the Moroccan king as well as some pro-Western Sahara clips - until today. For the first time in two weeks, Moroccans can access YouTube again.
Thailand - A similar on and off situation is found in Thailand, which blocks/bans/sues YouTube every time a new clip which mocks their king appears. Thailand has recently lifted the ban, but who knows when it may appear again.
Iraq - Iraq has quite a weird situation: in Internet cafes you can access YouTube, but the US military forces residing there, due to an order from Pentagon, can’t. The ban, which blocks access not only to YouTube but also several other social networking sites, like MySpace (), is still enforced, despite severe protests from YouTube.
Brazil - Brazil, like Turkey, has had a nationwide YouTube ban due to a court order. The offending clip this time was Daniela Cicarelli’s sex stunt on the beach (how you can expect to have sex on the beach and not have it end up on YouTube is beyond us), and this Brazilian model insisted that the clip should either be fully removed (and users stopped from reposting it) or that YouTube should be banned altogether. YouTube was banned for a while, but the ban was removed relatively quickly.
Victoria, Australia (in schools) - Australia is also included here (actually, only one of its states, Victoria) because YouTube was banned in schools there. It’s not really a full ban, but it’s not negligible either, considering some 1600 schools were affected.
China and India - Finally, China and India currently have no active ban on YouTube, but both states have on occasions threatened to block the video sharing website; India because of a video clip mocking Gandhi, and China because of their general policy of banning all kinds of stuff.
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[1] Several options are available, presented below in escalating levels of difficulty:
- Open DNS is quite often enough to get around the bans. You can only use Open DNS if you have administrative rights on your computer (thus leaving many users at work out of the loop). Basically how it works is that when you type any address with a 'name' (not an IP number) you are sent to Open DNS (to look up or 'resolve' the address) instead of Turk Telekom. This opens up most sites that are banned in Turkey.
- Free Proxies: Pretty much the default home page on computers in Istanbul Internet cafés is vTunnel. This site, alongside myriad of other free proxies can be used as they have yet to be banned. This service is paid for by annoying pop-up advertising, but is one way of getting around the ban if you're on a public computer.
- Hard Coding an update into a Windows system file is a solution.
- Hot Spot Shield that works much in the same way as Torpark by allowing you obtain an IP address from U.S. based servers. Go to www.hotspotshield.com and download their free software. It will enable you to turn it off and on as you need or want to use it. It's also handy for watching video streams from U.S. based networks like NBC, Fox, etc., who block access to their video from IP addresses that are not in America. And, like Torpark, your surfing is anonymous.
- Sansur Sensin (you are the censor. Possibly the simplest way around the ban is to simply click on http://www.sansursensin.com/. This link will take you straight to YouTube's main page.
- Hot Spot Shield that works much in the same way as Torpark by allowing you obtain an IP address from U.S. based servers. Go to www.hotspotshield.com and download their free software. It will enable you to turn it off and on as you need or want to use it. It's also handy for watching video streams from U.S. based networks like NBC, Fox, etc., who block access to their video from IP addresses that are not in America. And, like Torpark, your surfing is anonymous.
- Sansur Sensin (you are the censor. Possibly the simplest way around the ban is to simply click on http://www.sansursensin.com/. This link will take you straight to YouTube's main page.
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