CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘censorship’ Category

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.

[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.

Groups say Web site bans hurt Turkey’s image

Several Turkish nongovernmental organizations advocating freedom of speech and expression have stressed in a written statement that frequent Web site bans damage Turkey’s image abroad.

A large number of NGOs, including the Internet Technologies Association (İTD), Turkish Informatics Association (TBD) and Whole Internet Association (TİD), released the joint statement yesterday, emphasizing that Turkey is damaging its prestige and image in the eyes of other countries by frequently blocking access to various Web sites.
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Thais block anti-royal websites: “Thailand plans to spend millions of dollars on an internet firewall, to block websites deemed insulting to the monarchy.”

(Via BBC News.)

[Blog entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz]

It is now been reported by a media news source that the Diyarbakir First Criminal Court of Peace has removed the blocking order it issued on 20.10.2008 (order no. 2008/2761) and executed on Friday, 24 October, 2008 with regards to Blogger.com and Blogspot. The DNS servers should be updated by end of today so currently users may still be unable to access the popular blogging sites.

It is, however, unclear why the order has been lifted and it seems like the ban is lifted until Digitürk provides to the court further evidence with regards to its claims for football streaming piracy. Therefore, I would not be surprised to see the blocking order and the ban reinstated.

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.

Error: Court halts Internet freedom in Turkey: “Error: Court halts Internet freedom in Turkey
The latest in a series of bans on popular Web sites has spurred many to question the future of Internet freedom in Turkey. Turkish Internet users trying to access the popular blog-hosting service blogspot.com get an error message saying that access to the site has been blocked by a court decision, without stating the court ruling or explaining why the service has been banned.”

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I reported on Friday, 24 October, 2008 that access to Blogger.com and blogspot.com were blocked in Turkey. with a blocking order of the Diyarbakir First Criminal Court of Peace (dated 20.10.2008 and order no. 2008/2761).

It is now being reported by Turk.internet.com that the blocking order is related to an intellectual property infringement. Digitürk is a subscription based digital TV platform in Turkey which owns the right to transmit the live coverage of the Turkish football league games. Digitürk obtained the blocking order through the Diyarbakir court according to the Turk.internet.com news as there were blog entries providing information and links to known websites which transmit pirated transmission of the live football league games.

According to the news Digitürk contacted blogger.com and requested the blog entries to be taken down but nothing was done by blogger.com and Digitürk had no other option than requesting the Diyarbakir court to block access to the two domains and their IP addresses. Such a blocking is allowed under the Turkish intellectual property laws and Digitürk previously obtained a similar access blocking order for JustinTV and for MyP2P TV.

I will assess the wider implications for such a blocking order within the next few days.

As of 01 October, 2008, 1115 websites are blocked in Turkey under the provisions of Law No. 5651. It is however believed that the blocking order issued by the Diyarbakir court is outside the scope of Law No. 5651. The blocking orders issued under Law No. 5651 are executed by the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) and they provide an “execution notice” when that is the case. However, there is no information whatsoever provided on the http://www.blogger.com pages when accessed from Turkey.

[Blog entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz]

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.

Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics - BizTech

Asher Moses, October 24, 2008

The Federal Government in Australia is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography.

Internet providers and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent.

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