I’m sure you are all getting sick of these headlines, “(Insert Web site here) blocked in Turkey!” In fact, I’m even sicker writing them. But yes, this one’s true too. Although, to be more precise, the CNN Political Ticker blog, to be found on the CNN.com site — i.e., not the whole of CNN.com — is blocked in Turkey. The very same message that appears when visiting any WordPress (WP) blog, or the Yahoo-owned Flickr Blog as also recently reported, comes up for the Political Ticker: “Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance.” Which, of course, means it is the subject of the same private “defamation” court order enacted by one infamous Adnan Oktar.
Those familiar with the original WP blocked in Turkey story will know that the court order stems from the an attempt to close down a number of WP blogs “slandering” the controversial Islamic creationist. But, instead, the entire network of the fourth largest blogging platform in the world has been suspended on Turkish soil. So is there any slanderous/defaming/libellious material to be found when scouring CNN’s Political Ticker? Well, considering that the whole blog is decicated, more or less, to covering the US 2008 Presidential campaign you’d think you’d be hard-pushed to find something wouldn’t you? But not wanting to discredit the Turkish legal system’s objectivity outright without further investigation, I did a thorough “find on this page” word search for the words “Adnan” and “Oktar.” Not surprisingly my probe yielded no results. Still, with a cigarette-rolling-paper-thin hope that the Turkish legal system could not be that blind, I extended the probe to include the pen-name of the self-described (on his own Web site) “prominent Turkish intellectual,” who is “[c]ompletely devoted to moral values and dedicated to communicating the sacred values he cherishes to other people,” namely “Harun Yahya.” The thorough 30-second probe is now officially closed, and the paper-thin faith totally burnt. It seems that Hillary, Obama, Rudy and the rest of the US presidential hopefuls couldn’t find a single thing to say on the man on every Turkish WP blogger’s lips (often preceded by expletives).
Likewise, another similar search on the photo-sharing Flickr Blog on the two alternative names — or any combination thereof, as Oktar’s lawyers’ demanded from WP in their initial letter explaining why the WP network was now blocked — revealed, equally, not a single pic. (Viewers still keen to see his visage can easily check his own Web site — even in Turkey.)
However, there does seem to be apparent negligence on the part of both CNN Political Ticker and Flickr Blog. The evidence can clearly be found at the foot of the page: “Powered by WordPress.”*
Some enlightenment on the issue, perhaps, can be found on WP founder Matt Mullenweg’s personal site, Photo Matt. In his latest Turkey update, whereby the lawyers for Oktar seemingly rub the Internet community’s face in it (see “WordPress block: Oktar lawyers issue ‘threat’ to Internet“), one Turkish commenter wrote:
“Istanbul is [the] last stop for old judges before retirement. They’re all too old (to rock and roll and) to learn web technologies. They’re also too busy to research for [these] kind of ‘childish’ issues. That means, if someone requests a domain blocking to any Istanbul court, [the] judge (probably) thinks: ‘There may be [no] risk for society (or for my carr[e]er [in its] last minutes), let me block now, some other one [can] fix it anyhow’.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Whilst it is apparent that the above piece appears quite mocking in tone, the author has reassured us of its authenticity. In fact, the source for the above (available in Turkey) can be reached here, on Photo Matt’s Turkey Update, whereby a commenter stated that the “CNN Political Blog” (sic) was also blocked. It was duly checked from within the borders of Turkey and found to be correct. The author, one Jim Colella, wishes it to be known that he is still capable of objective journalism, although the current and very apparent “ridiculousness of this affair,” as he put it, is making this noble aspect of his work increasingly difficult. He is currently seeking refuge in the WC — “one of the few outlets for expression not blocked in Turkey,” he said.
* For the real and technical explanation of why CNN and Flickr are also caught in the block on WP in Turkey, see Bulent’s very useful comments below this post. In short, their alias URLs are sub-domains on WordPress.com
29 responses so far ↓
Jim // August 30, 2007 at 2:10 pm |
My sentiments exactly BM! Although it appears to be enough to just run on WordPress software to be banned in Turkey… who knows? Maybe there’s more. Prolly worth checking out, methinks.
As for getting BBC, Al Jazeera, NY Times etc. to report that AO/HY is a charlatan, paedophile, schizophrenic etc. (hell, I’ve seen/had it translated from the Turkish daily Sabah archives already). In fact, Raincoaster, a Canadian blogger fighting the good fight, had the very same idea at the outset of this craziness:
http://raincoaster.com/2007/08/19/wordpress-is-blocked-by-turkeys/
Jim // August 30, 2007 at 2:59 pm |
Tamam. It gets worse. Can you check what the URL for blog.flickr.com really is? It would be useful to know in the name of journalistic research.
Bulent Murtezaoglu // August 30, 2007 at 2:00 pm |
Great, now they have hurt an organization with the means to file a counter-suit. This is not bad news. The best thing to do would be to get the BBC, Al Jazeera, NY Times etc. to print whatever it is that’s offensive and get them blocked too. If a lot of the right people make noises about this, it is likely that the gov’t here will be pushed to modify the laws to set a higher threshold for the issuance of injunctions by explicit legislation.
Bulent Murtezaoglu // August 30, 2007 at 2:26 pm |
I checked, it is being blocked because
politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com
is actually an alias for
cnnpoliticalticker.wordpress.com
and any subdomain of wordpress.com ends up pointing to that legal notice if looked up through TTnet’s DNS servers.
So I got glad somewhat prematurely, CNN didn’t publish anything offensive to Oktar. Attempts at fixing this won’t necessarily take the route I hoped it would, but might in fact cause a new blocking architecture to be instituted like the Chinese one.
Bulent Murtezaoglu // August 30, 2007 at 3:31 pm |
Yeah
blog.flickr.com
is aliased to (CNAME in technical parlance):
flickrtheblog.wordpress.com
I use ‘dig’ from the command line but you can look these things up through web sites too. Check out the URL below:
http://www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php
Let me stress again, the best outcome for this for Turkey would be for there to be an explicit threshold and procedure written in law before such drastic action is taken. The worst outcome, IMHO, would be getting more technical facilities so they can surgically block things without really touching the law. This broad and bothersome block is a blessing in disguise actually as it is forcing Turks to think, let us not turn it into something that causes Chines-style sophisticated filtering technology to to be implemented here.
Turkey extends hand of friendship to fire-ravaged Greece (SETimes.com) // August 31, 2007 at 11:02 am |
[...] In his latest Turkey update, whereby the lawyers for Oktar seemingly rub the Internet community’s face in it (see “WordPress block: Oktar lawyers issue ‘threat’ to Internet“), one Turkish commenter wrote: … …more [...]
Nihat // August 31, 2007 at 6:03 pm |
Yes, I do agree that surgical intervention would be a bad thing to have established as the norm/precedent here. Elsewhere I have spoken to the opposite effect (e.g., why block the whole WP family when you can block the offending blogs only). But a very good point has been made here. A blessing in disguise. I like that… If only sufficiently many Turks had the wherewithal to bother themselves with these fundamental questions. Arguably, such blessings have been raining from the heavens upon us. Unfortunately, law and legislation questions don’t concern us much until they are mediatically cast in simple, black-and-white emotional/ideological terms. I don’t know, maybe I am expecting too much, being too negative at times. Like now… Somehow, I don’t trust AKP’s freedom & democracy championship as I fear it doesn’t entail naturally democratic responses to such questions.
One point (sort of a hunch) I have is, the remedy to such problems as this WP ban may already be found in the present laws. The problem doesn’t necessarily have to be put as one of making new laws, fixing the ailing ones. Not that I mean to say we don’t have ailing ones, but I wonder if anybody seriously looked into this possibility. It is not even clear who the defendant was in this Fatih court case. Edip Yuksel was not there, I understand; and, it is all but obvious that the WP camp was totally out of the loop. Did the court hear anybody pointing to the collateral damage a total ban would create? It may well take one harmed person’s seeking another civil court injunction (with damages?) to reverse this one. Another “do the good guys have the wherewithal?” question, I guess.
Bulent Murtezaoglu // August 31, 2007 at 6:37 pm |
Nihat, unfortunately the law here is going the opposite way. I posted a link under the ‘petition’ topic (alongside some other links, which caused the posting to be marked as spam). So in case you were not aware of the recent law, here’s where we are:
http://turk.internet.com/haber/yazigoster.php3?yaziid=18969
(The text of the law is linked from there.)
Nihat // August 31, 2007 at 8:15 pm |
Bulent, thanks for the link. I’ll take my time to look into the law (5651). As I am not a lawyer, it takes some time for me to digest these things. Can you clarify on what point the law is going the opposite way? Regarding surgical operations, or my alternative remedy suggestion?
The article you linked to, voices some views such as “this law is believed to be sufficient on its own (as a substitute for a whole package) as it covers a wide range of issues.” This made me think, some might want to see all disputes (like this WP issue) handled within the confines of this one law. Then, yes, my alternative remedy suggestion would be somewhat undercut by this. For, from a quick look at the law, I saw some mechanisms defined in there for the appeal process. But it is hard for me to imagine this (or any other) law grant blanket rights of appeal to all persons. I can imagine it to give that to the accused and his service provider. Apart from this, affected third persons should be able to seek their own legal remedy and/or compensation under other laws, shouldn’t they? Like one college professor who commented on Matt’s blog. My take on his situation, in simple terms…
– I had a WP blog set up for my class for teaching purposes.
– This ban caused loss of my course material (maybe), and my and my students’ access to it (certainly).
– I am harmed as an innocent user of a legitimate service.
– I don’t care under what law, or upon whose complaint, this ban is ordered.
– I’ll sue someone’s ass off. If of course I can find an appropriate law and court (and a fighter lawyer) to do that.
Isn’t this a possible course of action at all? It may be tangential in its approach to the question of getting this ban lifted. For all our professor cares, it may wholly be a personal matter. But it would ultimately help bring to light the shortcomings of a particular law. Of course, I know, in Turkey, big asses are mightily covered, and our poor professor might not even dare try as he, smart as he is, predicts the above course of action means going after some really big asses. I guess, he has to be an avid freedom fighter to try. Sort of a jihadist?
Sorry for the language. In any event, I hope you would understand and excuse me, as mine is political speech despite the given legal context. I should look at that law…
Bulent Murtezaoglu // August 31, 2007 at 9:57 pm |
I meant it is going the opposite way as in mandating centralized control, heavy duty traffic logging, and all manner of licensure. It also recognizes ‘blocking’ as a remedy and legitimizes it.
I have watched the efforts to lay the groundwork for this law in the media, and it was all about child pornography. Now look at that list, they have seven items there already and once the facilities are in place the temptation will be there to add more.
As for the professor suing people, I’d look at the TOS for WordPress. The venue is clearly written there (courts in SF County, CA, USA). If he’s inclined to sue WordPress, that’s probably the way to go. But I see what you are saying, it isn’t clear WordPress is really at fault here. As for suing the Turkish gov’t, good luck. Perhaps he should consider buying services from a duly licenced and compliant local provider?
Nihat // August 31, 2007 at 10:20 pm |
OK, I see your meaning. I had noticed those seven items enumerated in the law. Interestingly, civil claims between private persons is not among them. The article points that out, too, towards the end. It also attributes the continuence of the WP ban to absence of someone to speak for WP as the provider or for third-persons as users.
Yeah, I meant his suing the government (knowing full well he’d need all the luck in the world and beyond).
(
Nihat // September 1, 2007 at 7:19 am |
I’ve just done with my first reading of the law. I think it has some interesting aspects apart from what it says would constitute basis for ‘block on access’ or ‘removal of content.’
For one thing, the law doesn’t concern itself with any kind of communications with a content hosting service provider based abroad, e.g., WordPress. In the case of harmful content hosted by such a foreign provider, it directly falls back on blocking access to this content without stipulating any attempt for requesting its removal.
Is that because there is near-monopoly within Turkey of Turk Telekom as the access service provider (a.k.a. ISP)? Hence such fall back is possible (cheap, easy and effective)?Or, is it because the opposite is regarded as too costly, difficult and possibly futile? No matter what the reasons are, it appears that some of the bitching that I and others (Jim included:)) have been doing was meaningless. WP wasn’t properly engaged or notified by the court! The court may be laughing its ass off at us.
For me, another perverse consequence of this realization is that Oktar’s attorneys’ contacting WordPress in advance of the block can be seen as acts of kindness and courtesy to WordPress and its users at large! Please, nobody jumps here. I said perverse, didn’t I?
Of course, not all articles of this law are in effect yet, i.e., not sure if the WP blocking case was handled wholy under this law. I don’t know what kind of law (if anything) existed before, either. But I can’t imagine a more liberal or thoughtful one to precede this. (Not that I mean this law is so, but it’s better than nothing. A framework that can be improved. Like adding a stipulation for proper communications/engagement with the foreign service provider, as a matter of minimizing the collateral damage if for nothing else…)
Another thing is, the law doesn’t recognize the notion of subdomains. It sees only content providers (e.g., Edip Yuksel with his subdomains), and hosting and access service providers. To be fair, in the case of harmful content, it seeks a resolution starting from the finer end of the spectrum. Further technical critique might be warranted here, but I digress. The above shortcut to blocking access to content hosted by a foreign provider appears to be the major spoiler in the case at hand. Thanks to the missing notion of subdomains, I guess, the court wouldn’t know to order blocking of offending WordPress blogs only instead of the entire family unless it was properly informed about them.
Jim // September 1, 2007 at 11:19 am |
Keep going guys! I’m totally impressed. Will join the discussion soon, but am busy writing something else (connected to this). In short though, for anybody else reading this totally informed debate, Nihat and Bulent are Turkish and laying this all out in perfect English! Just what the international blogosphere needs.
One brief point though Nihat: As Matt replied to me when I asked how he received the last letter from the laywers practically gloating that they got their way through the courts — http://photomatt.net/2007/08/25/turkey-update/ — he wrote:
“They spammed 4-5 email addresses with it, just like they used to with their complaints. It was already in English, I didn’t translate it.”
Spamming a poorly-written demand in the service provider’s (WP) mother tongue to remove the offending blogs DOES NOT amount to a court order, nor legitimate legal protocol… and surely by even Turkish legal standards. For instance, what happened to writing an official demand printed onto officially headed paper — i.e., the lawyers’ company title at the top — in perfect English (what Adnan Oktar couldn’t afford it?) as a due process of law. As Matt writes, it was spammed… and we all know where spam goes. So, in that respect, there wasn’t really any notification. The judge and the court (IMHO) are seriously at fault here. This is what is at the centre of this farce! WP can hardly be classed as “warned” before the ban took effect. No wonder they’re (WP) angry…
As for the rest. I’ll be back. Got to catch up on that law… Unfortunately for me it’s in Turkish. My wife will translate at some point! Otherwise, I’m relying on you two to disseminate & debate!
Jim // September 1, 2007 at 1:00 pm |
Nihat & Bulent,
My wife, Ilknur, and I have just been through some of this 5651 law regarding the Internet — http://rega.basbakanlik.gov.tr/eskiler/2007/05/20070523-1.htm –
and in particular Article 8 regarding the reasons for blocking. As you wrote Nihat, “I had noticed those seven items enumerated in the law. Interestingly, civil claims between private persons is not among them.” … Am I missing something here? The seven reasons are — briefly in English, with their corresponding Article of the Turkish Penal Code in brackets — as follows:
1) Promoting suicide (Article 84)
2) Abuse of children (Article 103, first paragraph)
3) Promoting drug use (Article 192)
4) Providing harmful substances for health (Article 194)
5) Pornography (Article 226)
6) Prostitution (Article 227)
7) Promoting and providing opportunities for gambling (Article 228)
…and, of course, there follows a paragraph relating to Law No. 5816 listing crimes against Atatürk.
So where exactly is defamation/slander/libel against a private person, as listed in the Turkish Penal Code (Article 125)?
It DOES NOT APPEAR as a reason to block a site!
Are we missing something here? Do you know or can think of some other law that is being used? The weird thing is the Ekşi Sözlük block rested on the same slander of Adnan Oktar issue.
Any ideas?
Jim // September 1, 2007 at 1:51 pm |
Hi Bulent
it wasn’t spam… it was just waiting for me to approve it. Am slow on that sometimes because, of course, I am blocked and have to connect by other means… It’s there now, above your last comment. Sometimes your comments are automatically approved (which I don’t understand), sometimes wait for approval, sometimes get caught in the WP de-spamming device. Dunno why!
Will have a look at the above with Ilknur…. Interestingly/Ironically that scanned copy is on Flickr — which is blocked in Turkey of course! (…for some of us:))
Jim // September 1, 2007 at 1:54 pm |
– sorry! Correction: It’s blog.flickr.com that’s blocked. Silly me. Getting so confused. There’s a block on my head methinks.
Bulent Murtezaoglu // September 1, 2007 at 11:25 am |
Nihat,
In the case of harmful content hosted by such a foreign provider, it directly falls back on blocking access to this content without stipulating any attempt for requesting its removal.
Yes. This is my understanding also.
Is that because there is near-monopoly within Turkey of Turk Telekom as the access service provider (a.k.a. ISP)?
Others exist, especially for leased lines etc. I think since 1998 or 1999 being/becoming an ISP is subject to licence from Ankara so they are all known at one place. But you are probably correct in the broader sense that the other ISPs are mainly TT’s resellers and all can be reached easily.
Hence such fall back is possible (cheap, easy and effective)?
Hmm, of course it is neither easy nor effective the way they are doing it now. I doubt they’ll keep doing it like this. BTW, Turk Telekom funnelled all web accesses though transparent proxies at some point (open ones at that, I bet you Russian hackers loved it). So they tried monkeying with the traffic at the http level at least once. It could also be that some low-life who stands to gain from the sale of Chinese-style ‘filtering’ equipment lobbied people in Ankara and planted the thought in their minds.
My fear is that they’ll start doing it in a more sophisticated manner and simultaneously make circumvention and/or dissemination of the knowledge that leads to circumvention a crime. Again this is not unprecedented, DMCA in the US did precisely that for circumvention measures. I also wouldn’t put it past them to block access to UDP/TCP port 53 to force people to use TTnet’s DNS servers. Just the ‘obscenity’ part of the law would require a lot of sites to be blocked, and people would work around any DNS-based trick in short order.
There are other long term implications like effectively breaking the end-to-end nature of the net and forcing people to do only the technicaly approved things at implicitly (but revokably) approved places etc. Developing the facility for and the habit of interference with customer traffic at the packet or protocol level with the excuse of enforcing the law opens the door to fearsome darkness. It does seem that this line will be crossed sooner or later and there’s very little one can do to stop the process. I’ll quote HL Mencken on one reason why it is tough to stop:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
(Remember, the press making a fuss about child porn provided considerable impetus for the creation of this law.)
I don’t know what kind of law (if anything) existed before, either.
Well, I was sort of in the business 96-99 and AFAIR prosecutors would send lists of IPs to be filtered at the routers. So some kind of legal facility to do this must exist even if the law doesn’t mention the net explicitly.
Another thing is, the law doesn’t recognize the notion of subdomains.
It doesn’t need to, I think — as you note — the language implies narrowly blocking the offending site.
In the youtube case the DNS trick was followed by filtering at the routers, I think. They probably couldn’t figure out how to do it by IP for WordPress as it ultimately resolves to Akamai servers. (Akamai is a distributed content caching service.) Of course even if they do it at the routers and at IP level, they’ll also inadvertently block name-based virtual hosts at least. I don’t know how the Chinese deal with this, perhaps they simply don’t care.
Bulent Murtezaoglu // September 1, 2007 at 1:24 pm |
Are we missing something here? Do you know or can think of some other law that is being used? The weird thing is the Ekşi Sözlük block rested on the same slander of Adnan Oktar issue.
I don’t know about the Oktar issue, but a previous ban on Eksisozluk was based on a rather inventive use of another law. Here’s the scanned copy judgement where the judge both lifts the ban and clarifies which law he used:
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=155529452&size=m
You can find it here:
http://www.ceza-bb.adalet.gov.tr/mevzuat/5271.htm
(I am not a lawyer)
Bulent Murtezaoglu // September 1, 2007 at 1:32 pm |
Hmm, I tried to provide links but apparently that comment got flagged as spam. So let me try with a general link that includes all I was saying and more:
http://turk.internet.com/dosya/0605/yazilar/
Nihat // September 1, 2007 at 6:15 pm |
Jim, can you clarify your comment moderation mechanism (if any)? Even if you don’t have any, WordPress may have some in place. For example, in another blog which I though had no moderation, I posted a comment, and got a message “your comment is waiting for approval.” Then I learned it was because I had more than two (to be precise, three) hyperlinks in my comment. I can’t tell if this is something the blog author configures, or a WordPress thing.
Bulent, FYI, my background is technical, but re: these IT questions, I am not as knowledgeable as you are, clearly. Hence I sometime assume things cheap, easy, and effective. It may not be cheap and easy, but how about effectiveness for casual users?
Bulent Murtezaoglu // September 1, 2007 at 10:19 pm |
Nihat,
I am not as knowledgeable as you are, clearly.
I haven’t dealt with stuff professionally for a while so take what I say with a grain of salt.
It may not be cheap and easy, but how about effectiveness for casual users?
I think you can make it as almost effective as any tight corporate firewall/filter if you are willing to spend the money. It’ll be equally broken in many ways too. That is, http/web traffic would work, do the ’surgical’ filtering and log the offending accesses; many of the known services like IM etc. would work at varying levels of functionality depending on what they care to filter (p2p ought to be censorable too, if they want to get rid of porn). Any new/unkown service not working like the known ones will likely not work. This last point is important because if the net had been like that in 1990 we wouldn’t have the web, it had been like that in 1995 we wouldn’t have instant messaging, VOIP, P2P and so on. The net, as we know it, is not designed to facilitate tight control of the kinds of things done with it. I don’t think people understand what a blessing that has been and how much progress it aided.
Anyway, I am not saying they would do things this tightly, but just that if what they do is to be meaningful they’d need to. I’m sure (as the article indicates) there are people in Ankara who claim/think all this can be done easily, from a central location, under their control and without undue bother to the users, but I don’t know what they know and whether they know things I don’t. Someone tought monkeying with DNS was a good/workable idea too and it ended up preventing access to CNN and Flickr simply because they made (technically perfectly OK) use of a DNS feature.
Jim // September 2, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
Nihat,
Re: “Jim, can you clarify your comment moderation mechanism (if any)? Even if you don’t have any, WordPress may have some in place.”
As far as I can tell, I think it basically works around the premise on whether you’re a first time commenter… i.e., it seems that, more or less, you and Bulent are getting automatic approval ‘coz I approved you on the first time (fine by me). I get an email notification that you’re comment is on my WP blog. But I think there’s something in the hyperlinks idea. For example, Bulent’s comment that he thought was caught in spam was merely awaiting moderation. So those auto-approved comments prob. didn’t have any links (I think!). Likewise, I’ve posted comments elsewhere (on WP) with links that then say “awaiting moderation.” So I’m guessing that’s the case. Stuff that gets caught in the de-spam mechanism is full of similar looking URLs in it and is definitely spam. For example, I keep getting spammed by sites selling upmarket car parts. Need any car parts?
Islamist Adnan Oktar Blocked CNN Blog AK Party » AKP Watch // September 2, 2007 at 8:12 pm |
[...] Jim Collela reports that CNN Blog is also effected by the recent block of WordPress by AK Party connected Islamist/Creationist cult leader Adnan Oktar (a.k.a Harun Yahya).Oktar, acting like a proxy to AK Party, obtained a court order to block WordPress in Turkey which effected all WordPress powered sites, even the ones not using wordpress.com domain name, such as CNN Political Ticker and Yahoo owned Flickr Blog. [...]
Jim // September 3, 2007 at 4:05 pm |
I’m allowing this dubious comment ( from these guys again), to show what I posted on their site:
Merhaba AKPWatch,
I’m flattered you are paying attention to my WordPress (WP) blog, and all of the posts I’ve filed since this absurd ban began. But I have to disagree on one single point. And that is: I DID NOT WRITE “that CNN Blog is also [a]ffected by the recent block of WordPress by AK Party connected Islamist/Creationist cult leader Adnan Oktar (a.k.a Harun Yahya).” I wrote that the CNN Political Ticker Blog and Flickr Blog are also blocked because of the same court order (decision no.: 2007/195) enacted by Adnan Oktar. The point here is that I never wrote that Adnan Oktar IS CONNECTED TO the AK Party. Any connection is tenuous at best. That’s your view of it. I have no evidence that could prove that and wouldn’t write it unless I had. Maybe you have and should publish it.
On that score, your story about Gaziantep deputy Ahmet Uzer is interesting. I heard something about that. Though I hadn’t heard about the decision to put the (dreadful) “Atlas of Creation” into public libraries (why bother, it’s handed out for free on the street anyway!). If it is the case, as a “citizen journalism” tip, provide a link to a reputable news source if it was in one of the Turkish newspapers. Even if it’s in Turkish, the Turkish audience (affected by this ban in particular) could check that it is substantiated.
But please guys, don’t quote me out of context!
Bulent Murtezaoglu // September 4, 2007 at 1:09 pm |
Let me follow up on what I’ve said about dangers posed to the future of technological progress with a link to a blog entry from a big name, Tim Berners-Lee:
“When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.
[...]
Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies control what I can access for commercial reasons. (In China, control is by the government for political reasons.)”
Source: http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144
Again the context is the situation in the US, but the danger is seen in changing the nature of the net to bring about more control of the traffic — precisely what would need to be done for our new law to be truly effective. I suppose Sir Timothy could add Turkey alongside China and cite fear of porn, illicit sex and gambling among our reasons.
I’d also recommend the piece by Tim Wu on China which touches on some of things we talked about here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2122270/
And, finally, here’s a recent article in Turkish from the net (with lots of references to newspapers) which might provide a sense of the intense fear campaign centered on child and adult porn:
http://www.derindusunce.org/2007/08/30/tehlikenin-farkinda-misiniz/
Nihat // September 4, 2007 at 7:15 pm |
Tim Wu also co-authored a book with Jack Goldsmith:
Who Controls the Internet?
Illusions of a Borderless World
Oxford University Press, USA
February 24, 2006
The France vs. Yahoo case is the opening story of their book which, in its entirety, was an eye opener for me. Namely, there is (and has been) tremendous forces acting towards superimposing national borders over the Net traffic. These stem from political and commercial interests, as well as from ordinary people’s need for law and order, and the governments’ tendency to be the sole/ultimate dispenser of such in their respective countries.
In my opinion, fight for freedom on the Net is handicapped from the beginning if the above factors are blatantly ignored (this could have been said in the past tense really). The Goldsmith-Wu book provides a chronicle of how several powerful advocates of Internet freedoms were eventually defeated… In this light, it appears to me, the approach should be one of limiting the damage, especially when it comes to legislation in trailing countries such as Turkey. I don’t know, maybe, analogies that would resonate with the existing political/legislative mindset could be invoked to stall further negative developments.
For instance, nobody would suggest, as the first thing, cutting of Lufthansa’s access to Turkish airports or passengers just because Lufthansa is the carrier of choice for some criminal individuals. On the flipside, of course, Lufthansa’s such access is subject to complex contracts with Turkish authorities, and they would presumably act upon lawful Turkish requests per these contracts and without much fuss. If this Lufthansa-Turkey example sounds fictitious, consider post-9/11 international air travel to the States, which can be summed up as “You don’t implement my security measures? Don’t bother letting any plane take off towards American soil.”
Of course, I am not at all suggesting that a civil defamation case, and a questionable one at that, is comparable to 9/11 or criminality in general. But, to me, these help show the conflicting interests of the governments and the ordinary people at large, let alone the fact that many an ordinary, law-abiding person might agree with his government, probably more often than not.
A bit more on the shortcomings of Law No. 5651.
– In relation to foreign providers, it doesn’t reflect good world citizenship on Turkey’s part. We know many Internet/web innovations start out a good-faith basis, e.g., WordPress. They should be deserving of similar treatment in return. I.e., the Law could stipulate direct engagement with them to resolve issues before enabling action against them. To wit, I think, Matt’s response would have been totally different had he received an authentic notification from a court, instead of ambiguous or threatening attorney letters.
– In relation to its quick descent towards holding hosts and carriers responsible for preventive action against their users… Could it not have set a threshold of first requiring other, ordinary law enforcement efforts to be exhausted? Even in regards to child porn and the like… There is a big fear campaign about this in the States, too. Yet I am not aware of any good-faith service provider being shut down for it. There is a lot of plain-clothes cyber-policing and resulting arrests though.
Wordpress Continues to be Blocked in Turkey; The Van Der Galiën Gazette // September 13, 2007 at 9:01 pm |
[…] news arrived as Jim Collela wrote on his blog: [CORRECTED] “the CNN Political Ticker Blog and Flickr Blog are also blocked […]
When Radicals Take Over « The Van Der Galiën Gazette // September 21, 2007 at 6:02 pm |
[…] are two blogs who have spend a lot of time and attention to this blockade: AKP Watch and Istanbul Despatches. Both have tried to get people to organize to get the Turkish government so far as to undo the […]
About Wordpress being blocked in Turkey « Martin’s Virtual Nothingness // October 31, 2007 at 4:22 pm |
[...] Here’s a good article about the situation and other services being blocked by the Turkish Government: http://istanbuldespatch.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/now-its-cnn-blocked-in-turkey-2/ [...]