YouTube’s Political Dues Make Waves Worldwide
After years of on-again, off-again, YouTube faces more interdiction in Turkey. This time is not about videos considered insulting to Atatürk, but a compromising footage about the former opposition party leader Deniz Baykal.
In the former incident a law court decided that the misleading videos about the Turkish leader Atatürk should be restricted. Google’s response was an agreement over the video’s ban but only throughout the country.
Since May 2008 things were uncertain about the availability of the media database, but at the end of last week an official answer came from the Turkish side, lifting the ban. This move was due to the successful lift of the promiscuous videos by a “voluntary” team, which is said to be working with the national authorities.
Using an automated copyright protection system, the harmful videos were having restricted access for the public, but the availability of YouTube in Turkey didn’t last long. This time the juridical authorities decided to block the website because of a series of videos discreditable for a local political leader – who was forced to quit from the public scene because of the sexual scandal in which he took part.
Underneath the facts, the dispute between Google and Turkish authorities translates into the tarnished image that Turkey has for restricting the access to information, especially after 2007 when the country adopted a set of laws regarding the media. Google is not involving directly into this matter so that no precedent can happen.
Turkey isn’t the only country with political radicals making sticky situations for YouTube. The video-sharing site has also removed videos from Al Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American now living in Yemen. Due to his alleged connections with the recent package bombs, among other plots for terrorist actions, Awlaki’s content has been removed, reports NPR. He had hundreds of videos on YouTube, and UK officials have pressured the video site to take actions of their own.
In other news, UK officials are pressuring another subsidiary at Google–Street View Maps. Google continues to face legal issues from its data collection methods, in the project that’s set out to photograph the globe.
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