History repeating
World Bulletin is reporting that a Turkish court has ordered a block on Blogspot.com, again. Digiturk, a satellite TV provider in Turkey, has appealed to the Turkish courts to block the platform, on the grounds that the Blogspot was hosting pirated copies of Digiturk’s Turkish football content. This means that all blogs hosted by Google’s Blogger platform are unavailable in the country. Herdict started receiving reports from users in Turkey yesterday.
Google’s Transparency report does show a slight downturn in their Turkish traffic to Blogger, although this data won’t be finalized for another day or so. Their reporting on Turkish government take-down requests states they have been 100% compliant with removals in the past, but this report lags by more than 6 months.
This is not the first time that Turkey has blocked an entire platform. Global Voices reported on their block of Blogger in 2008 when Digiturk had a similar complaint. Before that the WordPress blogging platform was also blocked.
For more information on Turkey’s blocking policies and practices, check out Yaman Akdeniz & Kerem Altıparmak’s piece, Internet: Restricted Access: A Critical Assessment of Internet Content Regulation and Censorship in Turkey. Thanks to Alper Celikel for alerting us.
About the Author: lmiyakawa
Laura Miyakawa is the Project Manager for Herdict. In this role, she directs the tactics and the long term strategy for the site. Prior to joining the Berkman Center, Laura worked with the Boston Consulting Group, developing strategies for high tech clients up and down the East coast. While at BCG, she had the opportunity to work in outback Australia on a Welfare Reform pilot. Recently, she worked as a commercialization associate at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, where she handled all patenting and licensing decisions for the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering. Laura holds bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, respectively.
