Turkey Bans Google's Blogger Over Soccer Piracy 56
An anonymous reader writes "A local court has banned Google's Blogger service in Turkey in response to a complaint by satellite TV firm Digiturk that streaming media feeds from local soccer games were appearing on multiple Blogger profiles. Unsurprisingly, Google criticized the move, given that everyone is suffering over a few people's illegal actions. Copyright holders should target the individuals that are distributing the infringing content via an established complaints procedure rather than having the parent site banned. An estimated 600,000 Turks use the service to blog about anything from daily ramblings, to hobbies, to keeping their readers updated with the news."
Interesting... (Score:2)
Is the Turkish government merely twitchy about precious, precious "IP", or is this somewhat more like China, where external web services get blocked more or less at random in no small part because the government wishes to encourage use of some local competitor?
If the former, this seems like it could be counterproductive: beyond any considerations of "justice" or "proportionality", the (cynical, pragmatic) justification for targeted enforcement is that it keeps average-joe-on-the-
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More than likely this is somebody just using a host of Google Blogger accounts and despairing of chasing them down (and perhaps unable to get Google to provide the real identifying information), the Turkish court decided to just say no to Google because that would be the only way to get them to listen.
The one thing Google never seems to recognize is that evil can be in the eye of the beholder.
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US is much more strict in that sense.
OTOH, just because it's "blog" it doesn't mean it's about a page people share their opinions, vast majority of those blocks include the pirated content or links to them even worse with advertisement.
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I really don't think they should be blocking any content at all, and any method they do try to use is almost guaranteed to be breakable - the only real question is how hard it is to break. That said, I'm sure blocking the URL of the relevant blog or blogs at the DNS level would be about the same difficulty, and effectiveness, as blocking the whole of Blogger.
Blocking URL's at DNS level is pretty hard. DNS blocking is the easiest (and the least efficient) way to block content. Different URLs of the same site would resolve to same IP so you can't block a certain URL at DNS level easily (you still need prior monitoring if you want to do that.). Besides, why should anyone care a product of a company that doesn't do that themselves?
No, it isn't. If companies start yanking content based on the laws of countries other than those where their servers are located, whose laws should they draw the line at? Sweden? Turkey? Saudi Arabia?
If you can manage to distinguish users based on their geographical location for your income generating advertisement network, for sure y
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If they want to block the content, they should block the server streaming the live games. No infringing content was being hosted by the blogger service. Furthermore, there IS a complaints process to ban the violaters, which was not followed. Finally, this isn't about google. It could have been any other blogging service, or even one of those free web hosts.
This law turkey has, like many laws being made these days, doesn't reflect technical realities. If there was a drug dealer living in an apartment, you sh
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The process in Turkey works like this: Someone goes to court claiming a web site at a certain URL and/or IP is doing something forbidden (copyright infringements are just one example.) The court checks whether the claim is true and if it is, whether the service provider removes it once notified. If the claim is true and the service provider is unwilling to remove the offending content the URL name and/or IP block is forbidden. While the courts can decide whether or not ban a site, they don't have options to
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Australia is working on a filter to block "Unwanted Content" (Yes, that's what our government calls it) and the United States is looking at having the ability to kill the internet should it threaten the ruling government.
A consequence of the lack of a DMCA safe harbor. (Score:2)
There. I said it. The USA DMCA is not entirely evil.
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There. I said it. The USA DMCA is not entirely evil.
And Stalin made the trains run on time. So what? Simply because something has a redeeming quality or two doesn't grant it a reprieve.
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Need To Start Banning (Score:3)
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Left handed people?
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Local Courts, apparently. Or better yet, how about just banning local dumbshit judges that are still stuck in 1947 or whatever the hell yesteryear they graduated from law school in?
The broadcast rights to Spor Toto Super League matches are worth $321 million dollars. Blogger becomes latest victim of Turkish Internet bans [hurriyetdailynews.com]
This in a country with a population of 74.8 million - -- and it may help to explain why a Turkish court sends an early morning wake-up call to Google.
The Turkish system is very different from the U.S.
There are no juries, only judges and panels of judges.
There is no intermediate appelate system.
Which means that the decisions of your "dumbshit" local judge carry
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As unfortunate as it is, old media does use all its arsenal to protect their interests.
"New media" is not a free ticket to every game.
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Just let it go, Google (Score:1)
Otherwise your local employees may find themselves detained by police and questioned. Vigorously [amnesty.org].
But blogger cannot host streaming media (Score:2)
This all sounds fishy. Blogger has no mechanism to host streaming media. It integrates well with youtube and picasa, but neither of those could show you live games, both respond to takedown notices, and neither was targeted by this.
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Ignorant Local Courts (Score:2)
Yarrrr (Score:1)
It be haaard to be playin' ye olde soccerrrrrrr on account o' me wooden leg an' eyepatch an' the goalie be keepin' bustin' the ball wi' 'is hook me hearties!
Our kind of Law enforcement (Score:1)
Please, do not take this as personal freedoms, censorship etc problem.
This is the how Turkish law system works...
Some one use internet for piracy.
Piracy victim goes court and court assigns an expert. Expert suggest something, court agrees and bans the sites.
And Turkish telecom uses own dns based banning system...
Then people uses Google dns servers to access those banned hosts.
It was very frustrating thing for a western mind...
for us, it just another day to find the another way to jump other side of the fenc
There is a lot of censorship in turkey. (Score:2)
and then ther
everyone is suffering (Score:2)
given that everyone is suffering over a few people's illegal actions
Sounds more like everyone is suffering over a local court's clumsy trampling of free speech in order to protect the profits of some broadcast monopoly-holders.
Turkish President doesn't walk the walk (Score:1)
This would be the same Turkey whose president is so fucking stupid that he tweets about the joys of watching a pirated movie in the comfort of his own home [torrentfreak.com]?
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ip rights (Score:1)