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Turkey Hearts YouTube Again
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The Turkish court's decision to ban YouTube access within the country lasted a mere three days.
The ban was put into effect on Wednesday, March 7, after videos criticizing the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, began appearing on the site. Public criticism of Ataturk is a crime in Turkey, so it came as little surprise that the site was shut down.
On March 10, three days after the ban went into effect, the offending videos were removed, and Turkish Telecom received the go-ahead to once again allow public access to YouTube.
What remains unclear is what -- if any -- measures YouTube has put in place to prevent future videos critical of Ataturk (or the current Turkish regime) from re-appearing on the site. Also, will YouTube's parent company, Google, design software that will allow clips to be available in certain parts of the world and not in others?
YouTube has never declared itself to be a haven for free speech, but if it continues to bow to the pressure of removing any clip that is offensive to some people (and the Ataturk clips may well have been justifiably inappropriate for the site), it will soon become a much less interesting destination for curious viewers.
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