Since the beginning till today…
GoogleGroups, porn sites, Slide.com, WordPress, YouTube, bloggum.com, Richard Dawkins, Blogger etc.… Dailymotion is the latest addition (again) to this list of banned web sites in Turkey.
After the passing of the new law, web sites in Turkey can be banned without a warning for several reasons:
– Obscenity: This of course leads to a whole lot of questions like “How to define obscenity”
– Promoting drug use
– Provoking suicide: Another open-to-interpretation clause. Would a movie about a suicidal teenager be promoting suicide?
– Sexuel abuse of children
– Insult to Turkishness and Ataturk
– Prostitution
– Gambling
– Providing material harmful to public health
Although the law, passed seemingly to fight child porn, when the statistics are examined, the main reason of the banning of web sites, seems to be obscenity, which is 3 times more than sites shut down for child molestation.
Sites are shut down, without a single warning to the owner and instead of removing the specific harmful material in question, web servers are shut down completely leading millions of web site and blog owners frustrated. That’s what has happened with geocities.com and unfortunately with blogger.com as of today (October, 24th 2008). And today May 9th 2009, Dailymotion.com banned in Turkey again! By the way, Dailymotion is Turkish since last year and have a adult key for kids.
The banning of web sites not only violates our freedom to reach information, it also affects our work since many people earn money through blogs or other digital media. Moreover, what ever happenned to the principle: “One is innocent until proven guilty?”
What’s next? Facebook, maybe Google. Someday whole internet.
“Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.