Well I'm one of the lucky few within this country that has access to blogger/blogspot in light of the March 1, 2011 banning of the site. Apparently it was done because of a live stream that was broadcast through blogger. this copyrighted content belonged to the turkish media company, digiturk, and when attempting to contact google they received no response. SO, they took it to court and now whenever someone tries to go to a blogspot blog, from a Turkish server, they receive this message in big bold red letters:
"Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir"
which roughly translates to say, This site has been blocked by a court order.
thank goodness I have a VPN that makes it possible for me to still be digitally connected to the United States in terms of speech, and general freedom...is this my first patriotic moment? I am going on month seven of being a US citizen!
but, i digress...
i'm not going to go on an all out critique of this change because in all honesty i don't know what the cyber laws are in this country. Based on the research I did last semester on Pakistan, i'd say to be on the safe side (i.e. not getting picked up in the middle of the night, or physically threatened because of a blog post) i should make a neutral yet wildly loaded statement.
here i go,
so, we all know what just happened in Egypt, what's happening in Libya and what happened in both Iran and Pakistan in the past couple of years (the green revolution and the flickr/blogger/facebook/youtube response to the state of emergency).
Where militant control of the media was exercised in the interest of the state (for many reasons, which i can go into later if you're interested!!!!), to quell the hearts and minds of people fighting for their rights.
it seems rather ...searching for the right word... shallow? embarrassing? crazy? rash? interesting? one-of-a-kind? (how many words can I say that will throw off non-native english speakers of my linguistic intentions?) to ban a blogging website over a copyright, corporate debacle. at least in comparison to the nations within the same "regional block" as turkey. maybe, i'm jumping to conclusions? maybe I did some faulty research? but the way communications is handled within turkey has always been wildly strategic, from 1923 onward.
I'm actually pretty jazzed i'm here for this, i mean it's not inspired by a revolution, or some sort of marxist-like fear of social consciousness, but it is an infrigement on human rights. in my opinion, at least.
but how much is that worth? i'm only a blogger...
It's amazing to think of the extent that social media has empowered the youth movements across the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite quotes from The West Wing on privacy in 21st century America:
"It's not just about abortion, it's about the next twenty years. 20s and 30s it was the role of government, 50s and 60s it was civil rights, the next two decades are going to be about privacy. I'm talking about the internet, I'm talking about cell phones, I'm talking about health records, and who's gay and who's not. And moreover, on a country born on the will to be free, what's more fundamental than this."
-Sam Seaborn