CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘blocking and filtering’ Category

Since the Turkish Law No. 5651 on the Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed by means of Such Publications came into force in November 2007, several websites were blocked by court orders and administrative blocking orders issued by the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB). In terms of statistics, it was revealed by TIB that as of 01 November, 2008, 1187 websites are blocked in Turkey (compared to 1115 on 01 October, 2008) under the provisions of Law No. 5651. 264 (22%) of these websites are blocked by court orders, while majority, 923 (78%) are blocked via administrative blocking orders issued by TIB. [Blog entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz]

Turkish Blocking Orders as of 01 November 2008

Article 8(1)(a)(1): encouragement and incitement of suicide (article 84 of the Turkish Penal Code); article 8(1)(a)(2): sexual exploitation and abuse of children (article 103(1) of the Turkish Penal Code); article 8(1)(a)(3): facilitation of the use of drugs (article 190 of the Turkish Penal Code); article 8(1)(a)(4): provision of dangerous substances for health (article 194 of the Turkish Penal Code); article 8(1)(a)(5): obscenity (article 226 of the Turkish Penal Code); article 8(1)(a)(6): prostitution (article 227 of the Turkish Penal Code); article 8(1)(a)(7): gambling (article 228 of the Turkish Penal Code); article 8(1)(b): crimes committed against Atatürk (Law No. 5816, dated 25/7/1951); and football and other sports betting (Law No. 5728, article 256).

A detailed assessment of the Turkish approaches to Internet content regulation will be provided in a 100 page long report entitled Restricted Access: A Critical Assessment of Internet Content Regulation and Censorship in Turkey written by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz and Dr. Kerem Altiparmak. This bi-lingual (English/Turkish) report will be published during November 2008 and will be made available as a PDF file through cyberlaw.org.uk and cyber-rights.org.tr pages.

Malaysian authorities release detained anti-government blogger

Malaysian authorities today freed a blogger who edits an anti-government news website, after a court ruled his arrest under a law allowing indefinite detention was illegal.

Raja Petra Kamaruddin’s arrest in September for allegedly causing ethnic tensions sparked condemnation from the opposition and rights groups.

Today a high court judge ruled that Malaysia’s home minister acted outside his powers in using the Internal Security Act (ISA) to detain him.

Five hours later, a weary-looking Raja Petra, whose blog Malaysia Today has been a thorn in the side of the government, embraced his tearful wife and daughters outside the court in Shah Alam city, near Kuala Lumpur. He had been brought from a prison camp in the north of the country.

‘I’m really glad it’s over. I’m really tired. The judge’s decision proves there is no justification for my detention,’ Raja Petra, 58, told reporters.

‘This showed that the ISA cannot be used. I hope this is not a political decision.’

He has infuriated authorities by publishing numerous claims of alleged wrongdoing by government leaders on his popular site.

The government has denounced most of his allegations as lies and has accused Raja Petra of threatening public security and causing ethnic tension by publishing writings that ridiculed Islam in the Muslim-majority country.

He is also on trial in a separate case, accused of sedition by implying that deputy prime minister Najib Razak was involved in the murder of a Mongolian model and faces up to three years in jail if convicted.

Najib has strongly denied the blogger’s accusations, terming them ‘total lies’.

Raja Petra’s arrest was condemned by civic groups, lawyers and online commentators.

His lawyer, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, said the judge who ordered his client’s release said the grounds given for his detention were insufficient.

The ISA allows imprisonment without charge for an initial two-year period, with indefinite extensions possible.

The court order was ‘definitely a wonderful step in terms of civil liberties in Malaysia,’ Malik Imtiaz said.

But the ruling does not prevent the government from rearresting Raja Petra, and it can also appeal against the decision.

Some of Malaysia’s most popular blogs offer strong anti-government commentaries and present themselves as a substitute for mainstream media, which is controlled by political parties or closely linked to them.

Around 61 people are held under the colonial-era ISA. Critics say it is used randomly to silence government critics.

The government, facing its biggest challenge to its grip on power since independence in 1957, has recently come under strong pressure to abolish the ISA.

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)

Malaysian Blogger Fights a System He Perfected: “Mahathir Mohamad, former prime minister of Malaysia, is one of an increasing number of bloggers challenging government censorship and gaining influence in the political process.”

(Via NYT > Freedom of Speech and Expression.)

Cohen’s article refers to the censorship attempt involving the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar and the Akdeniz & Altiparmak article published in Bianet.

Nick Cohen: Beware - creationism’s march will go on, The Observer, November 2, 2008

The idea of intelligent fundamentalists, like the theory of intelligent design, does not stand up to 30 seconds’ scrutiny. I must, nevertheless, give credit to American evangelicals for showing belated glimmerings of sense. After decades of blindly endorsing evangelical politicians from the born-again Carter to the born-again Bush, they at last appear ready to look for more than religious dogma in a candidate.

Richard Cizik, the Washington representative of the National Association of Evangelicals, has all but backed Obama. ‘I’m a conservative, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to vote that way,’ he announced. ‘I could disagree with Obama, and do, on same-sex marriage and abortion, but that doesn’t mean I’ll vote against him.’

(more…)

Is the internet going down down under?: “

It’s the end of the net as we know it

The battle is now on for the soul of the Australian internet. The outcome could have enormous repercussions for the future of the internet in the UK.…

“

(Via The Register - Public Sector.)

John Ozimek: A victory for the terrorists | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Website censorship erodes the very freedoms that the home secretary purports to defend.

John Ozimek, guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 02 2008 20.00 GMT

The UK has a very real problem with websites that incite terrorism, and if we are not careful the government’s preferred cure could be as bad as the disease itself. Faced with the impossibility of policing material that originates from abroad, the home secretary is now planning to appoint herself the UK’s first official censor.

In 2006, the government passed a law banning the display of material that “directly or indirectly” encouraged terrorism.

Index on Censorship: ‘There are more people working on censoring the Internet than developing it’

Yigal Schleifer is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor

The successes of Harun Yahya show just how easy it is to shut down web discussion in Turkey, writes Yigal Schleifer

Turkish Internet users woke up on 24 October to find that access to Blogger, the popular blog-hosting site owned by Google, had been blocked by a court order, because of illegal material (streams of football games) found on a handful of blogs.

The ban on Blogger — provisionally lifted after five days — came without warning, but few were surprised by it. In the last two years, Turkey has become increasingly involved in controlling what its citizens can access online. So far in the last year, access to more than 850 websites has been blocked by the Turkish state, either through court order or government action. YouTube, the popular video sharing site, has been banned since last May, after amateurish clips mocking Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, were posted on it. WordPress, another major blog-hosting site, was blocked for more than a year and the website of Oxford evolutionist Richard Dawkins is currently off limits to Turkish Internet users.
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Reporters Without Borders

31.10 - Turkey: censorship threat to news website Bianet

(GIF) Lawyers acting for creationist religious leader Adnan Oktar asked the Turkish news website Bianet (www.bianet.org) on 28 October to remove an article about online censorship that was written by two specialists in Internet law, Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altiparmak.

‘Oktar now holds the record for suing websites that mention his name,’ Reporters Without Borders. ‘He has already brought 62 lawsuits. We support Bianet’s efforts to resist this absurd censorship.’

Posted on 20 October and entitled ‘Adnan Hodja against the Internet: all the bans contrary to the law,’ the article criticised the legal procedures used against websites and the arbitrary way some of them, especially those sued by Oktar, have been closed. ‘Adnan Hodja’ is one of the names used by Oktar. Akdeniz teaches Internet law at Leeds University, in Britain. Altiparmak teaches law at Ankara University’s political science faculty.

Turkey tightens controls on Internet speech | csmonitor.com: “Turkey tightens controls on Internet speech
The country’s courts and governments have banned 850 websites this year, including YouTube and Blogger.
By Yigal Schleifer | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 30, 2008 edition”

Istanbul, Turkey - For pioneering Turkish blogger Erkan Saka, these are dark days. Last week, he found himself cut off from a group of blogs that he belongs to and from hundreds of other websites he regularly reads.

A Turkish court had just banned Blogger, the popular blog-hosting site owned by Google, because of illegal material found on a few sites on its servers. It was just the latest among hundreds of sites banned by Turkey’s courts and government this year, raising concerns about censorship in a country with an already troubling record on freedom of speech.

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[Blog entry by Yaman Akdeniz] Interesting story developing in Turkey right now. If you would recall Adnan Oktar (Adnan Hodja) is the Turkish creationist who is behind almost 61 blocking orders issued by the courts in Turkey to popular websites including wordpress.com, richarddawkins.net, egitimsen.org.tr, groups.google and gazetevatan.com.

As you will read below, this time he threatened to take legal action against Bianet, an independent progressive media site which published an article (in Turkish) that was drafted by myself and Kerem Altiparmak. We basically argued in the article that with regards to private law matters such as claims for defamation, and privacy invasions, the notice & takedown, and right to reply provisions of article 9 of Law No. 5651 should be followed. We explained in the article that unlike article 8 of Law No. 5651 (which is used for blocking access to websites in Turkey), article 9 does not contain “blocking” measures. The Turkish Parliament decided to provide the “blocking measures” with regards to the catalogue crimes listed in article 8 only. Therefore, since the Law No. 5651 came into force, and based on the lex specialis derogat generali doctrine, it is unlawful for the courts, or public prosecutors which are empowered to decide on claims with regards to private law matters to issue “blocking orders” or precautionary injunctions. Currently, the specific governing law is Law No. 5651 and article 9 provisions are not overridden by laws which govern general matters within the Turkish law.

Furthermore, article 8 and article 9 provisions are clearly distinct from each other. While article 8 regulates serious content crimes committed on websites located both in and outside the Turkish jurisdiction, and provides blocking measures, article 9 regulates private law disputes between individuals and involves notice & takedown and right to reply provisions. The exclusion of blocking measures from article 9 shows that the main concern of the legislators was the tackling of the serious crimes listed in article 8 and blocking is not provided as a preventative measure for the less serious private law disputes.

Going back to the legal threat, obviously we have not “defamed” anyone including Oktar in the article. His lawyers are not happy about the views put forward including the criticism of the courts who have been issuing the blocking orders. They therefore thought it is best to get rid of our “views” completely. However, Bianet, which should be applauded for taking the risk of being blocked and taken to the court in Turkey stands by the decision to publish the article at http://www.bianet.org/bianet/kategori/bianet/110319/internete-karsi-adnan-hoca-tum-kapatmalar-hukuka-aykiri

The threats are not substantiated and will not lead into the article being removed from Bianet’s website nor from privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr. Currently thanks to the anti-censorship movement SansureSansur’s the article is being spread on a considerable number of Turkish blogs like a virus!

A detailed assessment of the Turkish approaches to Internet content regulation will be provided in an 80 page long report entitled Restricted Access: A Critical Assessment of Internet Content Regulation and Censorship in Turkey written by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz and Dr. Kerem Altiparmak. This bi-lingual (English/Turkish) report will be published during November 2008 and will be made available as a PDF file through cyberlaw.org.uk and cyber-rights.org.tr pages.