14 DAY TRIAL // Google's video service YouTube is still blocked in Thailand as the local authorities are trying to promote a law that would move the power of restricting access to certain pages to the court. Until now, the Minister of Communications was able to block any site without an official order from the judge. Using the new law, the local authorities are planning to clarify this procedure and avoid criticism from the Internet users and other organizations. According to ABC News, YouTube is still blocked in Thailand although the authorities and the Mountain View company struggled to remove the ban of the online video sharing service.
"Thailand has softened its hardline against political and controversial websites, but a ban against video-posting website YouTube remains. Thailand's military-backed cabinet has agreed to lift a controversial law which was put in place after the military coup to censor sites deemed dangerous to the nation. The Minister for Communications will no longer have discretion over shutting down sites, instead it will be by court order," the publication wrote in an article.
If you didn't know, the online video sharing service was blocked in Thailand after several clips insulting the country's king were published on the official page of YouTube. Although the authorities informed the Mountain View company about the existence of multiple insulting videos, YouTube refused to delete them because they were not infringing the service's guidelines.
After a few weeks of unavailability, YouTube finally decided to remove some of the pictures but the company's employees refused to delete all of them for the same reason. Recently, the local authorities announced that YouTube has become available to all the users of the country and that the unavailability was caused by a server glitch. Now it seems that the online video sharing service is still banned so the case becomes more interesting.