Academic asks Turkish court to overturn Myspace and Last.fm blocking decisions

Yaman Akdeniz, an Associate Professor of law at the Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University today (29 September, 2009) made an appeal to the Beyoglu Criminal Court of Peace to overturn the blocking decision involving both myspace.com and Last.fm from Turkey. The blocking decision was enforced by the Turkish ISPs since Friday, 18 September, 2009 by the order of the Beyoglu Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office (order no 2009/45 dated 26.06.2009)

The blocking order was issued subsequent to a request made by Mu-yap, the Turkish Phonographic Industry Society with regards to intellectual property infringements through these two sites.

Akdeniz asked the Court with his lawyer to overturn the blocking decision, and argued that the Supplemental Article 4 of the Turkish Law No. 5846 on Intellectual & Artistic Works which was used as a legal measure to issue the blocking order is unconstitutional. Therefore, Akdeniz asked the Beyoglu Criminal Court of Peace to consider sending his case to the Turkish Constitutional Court for review.

Details of the appeal will be made available once the Court considers the case. [Blog entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz – I will update this story as more information is made available – last update on 29.09.2009]