14 DAY TRIAL // The well-known video sharing YouTube is again banned in Turkey after its users uploaded insulting clips concerning the country's authorities. In case you forgot, YouTube was first blocked in Turkey in March for the same reason. At that time, a user uploaded videos insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a national hero for the Turkish nation. After several days of unavailability, the video sharing service's officials worked with the authorities in order to remove the clips and re-become available for the local users. This time, the videos are insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the army, as Middle East Times reported in an article published today.
According to the same source, the YouTube representatives already confirmed the problem and added that they will be working with the local authorities in order to identify the clips and remove the ban. However, don't be so sure that YouTube will become available too soon because a simple unexpected thing can change the agreement.
You can take Thailand for example, a country that banned YouTube a long time but which also held the restriction for a long period. The cases were a little bit similar as the authorities informed YouTube about the presence of several insulting clips which must be removed. The Mountain View super giant Google gave an unexpected answer: the videos remain available because they are not infringing the online video sharing technology's guidelines.
It's OK, the authorities said, we'll ban the entire service until you agree to remove the videos. And so they did. After an important period of unavailability, YouTube finally agreed to cooperate with the Thai authorities to remove the ban. There were a lot of rumors concerning the problem, the local ISPs sustaining it was only a server glitch and not a local ban.