Friday, January 25, 2008
Interesting News on YouTube in Turkey.
The Turkish government, via a court order, just recently constituted a nation wide ban on the use or provision of accessibility of YouTube, due to the fact that YouTube featured clips criticizing the founder of the modern Turkish nation state. Not only is this a clear violation of an individual's freedom of speech, but also more relevant to our subject matter such a ban infringes upon the individuals right to freely distribute and promote his/her literature or visual art. If such art was antagonistic to the public order or was obscene in nature, as defined in TRIPS, it could be arguable that the court has the rights restrict the distribution of the same. However, in this case neither of the former was evident.
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2 comments:
That is very interesting. I guess one of the policy reasons on safe habor provision is to discourage content filtrating and inspecting, no matter it is conducted by goverment or company. In the U.S. the most popular arguement is free speach, while in E.U., privacy right is more frequently used to support safe harbor provision.
There are (as always) two sides to this problem. As you might know, slander against the founder of modern Turkey is a criminal offence and not taken lightly by turkish authorities. If a clip on youtube fulfils the requirements of slander, taking down the site may be the only way to prevent this crime on the territory of Turkey. Other countries have similar problems. In the case of Germany, the amount of Nazi-propaganda an youtube is a serious problem. Under US law that might be covered by the right to free speech in Germany however its a criminal offence to distribute Nazi-propaganda. Blocking the site for all german users might again be the only possibility to prevent further distribution.
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