YouTube Ban/ Censorship

[piccolomondo]

"This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."

TechCrunch explains the PerezHilton's YouTube account takedown:

"The fact is that Hilton got caught up in the middle of a war between YouTube and Viacom, one in which the weapons are software-generated takedown notices, software-generated e-mails, and software-generated account closures. He is not the only casualty. He is just the most vocal" ...

[Al-khiyal]

YouTube Banned In Turkey

Turkey blocks access to YouTube

Ankara, January 20, 2008 (IRNA) -- A Turkish court has blocked access to the Internet YouTube.com video-sharing website.

The ban was a response to clips that insult Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the country's founding leader.

Users trying to access the site from Turkey were met with notices in English and Turkish saying access to the Web site was banned under an Ankara court's order.

The notices said the court order was issued January 17.

In March, another court blocked access to YouTube, which is owned by California-based Google Inc., for two days after a complaint that some clips insulted Ataturk.

The ban was lifted after YouTube removed the offending videos.

Vatan newspaper said Sunday the current ban was also imposed because of videos that were allegedly disrespectful of Ataturk.

It is illegal in Turkey to insult Ataturk, a revered figure whose portrait still hangs in nearly all government offices almost 70 years since his death in 1938.

It was not clear how long the current ban would last.

Anatolia news agency said YouTube officials issued a statement saying the company hoped access would be re-established quickly.

[Al-khiyal]

Pakistan blamed for worldwide YouTube break

February 25, 2008 -- If all had gone according to plan, Pakistan would have been the latest government taking part in an unsettling trend from Brazil to Thailand: YouTube blocking. Unlike its predecessors, though, Pakistan also affected thousands of people beyond its borders.

In case you were wondering on Sunday why you couldn’t watch the video clip of the moment — President Nicolas Sarkozy telling a man to “get lost” — YouTube’s answer was simple: Pakistan. Here is what the company had to say, via CNet: “For about two hours, traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet Protocols,” said YouTube spokesperson Ricardo Reyes in a statement. “Many users around the world could not access our site. We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again.”

Now that online video junkies have their favorite Web site back in good fettle, a more serious problem comes to the fore than boredom — Internet security.

“There will definitely be some fallout from this,” wrote Darren Waters, a technology reporter for BBC News. “It would seem that all it takes to hijack a website globally is […] a piggyback chain of confusion” at Internet service providers.

The chain of confusion started when Pakistan’s Internet tinkering was copied to an affiliated I.S.P. in Hong Kong, which copied it to other companies routing Internet requests across the world.

Experts on Internet routing agreed on their mailing list that the spread of the YouTube-blocking beyond Pakistan was an accident, according to Ars Technica, an erudite technology site that describes the incident in its full technical glory.

Another network experts told BBC News, “This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom.” (Wait until the boss finds out about this!)

As with previous cases of official YouTube-blocking, the anti-censorship crowds on the Web leapt first to criticize the Pakistani government’s action, while others questioned the stated motive for the move: Was it really just about videos of the controversial Muhammad cartoons, as the government said, or did it have more to do with President Pervez Musharraf’s grudge against the media?

Yet another theory was that Pakistan was actually testing some new form of cyberwarfare, an increasing concern from Washington to Beijing. But that seemed unlikely, not least because a real attack mounted in this way would have crippled Pakistan’s own Internet access.

By suddenly rerouting YouTube-content requests from around the world to be handled in Pakistan, a volume of Internet traffic far greater than usual for the country, “the leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country,” Richard Stiennon, a ZDNet blogger, wrote.

In his estimation, the chain of events was downright karmic:

I could say: “be careful what you wish for” to those elements that object to free and open access to information and expression of ideas. But to put it in terms they might understand better: Do not anger the Internet gods or you will suffer their wrath!

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YouTube and Pakistan - how did it happen?

[Al-khiyal]

Pakistan lifts curbs on YouTube, after offensive clip is removed

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, February 28, 2008 (AP) - Pakistan's telecom regulator said Tuesday it has lifted restrictions on the YouTube Web site after the removal of a "blasphemous" video clip.

The Pakistan Telecommu*ni*cation Autho*rity told Internet providers to restore access to the site after the clip became inaccessible, spokeswoman Nabiha Mahmood said.

Pakistan ordered the site blocked on Friday over a clip featuring a Dutch lawmaker who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence. The move accidentally knocked out access to the popular video-sharing site in many other countries for up to two hours.

[Al-khiyal]

Pakistan site swipe exposes web fragility