IPKat banned in Turkey -- but he's not alone

The IPKat has learned to his great dismay that not just he but all bloggers whose work is hosted on a Blogger Blogspot website are currently unavailable to Turkish readers, having been blocked by a court order. It seems that a local court in Diyarbakir, to the south-east of Turkey, ordered the ban in an action involving a copyright infringement claim made by the Turkish satellite TV company Digiturk.

According to the Kat's friend, IP scholar Dr Burcu Kilic, it seems that Digiturk is the assignee of the broadcasting rights of the Turkish premier football league.  When Digiturk discovered that some of the football matches in which it held the broadcasting rights had been posted on blogspot blogs without any authorisation, it filed a complaint against Blogspot. Since, under Turkey's Copyright Act, it is possible to shut down or block an entire service, the court blocked the entire Blogspot instead of requesting the removal of infringing content.

Discussions are still going on in Turkey, where this ban is generally interpreted as a “disproportionate response” which inflicts inconvenience on millions of internet users in Turkey. Some critics equate this ban with censorship. Turkish bloggers have now started a new campaign called “don’t touch my blog”, against the ban.

From the copyright perspective, the current provisions of Turkish copyright law provide once again unusually strong protection for right owners. A copyright proprietor can easily claim copyright infringement and ask the court to issue a blanket ban on the website or platform. As far as Burcu could check, thousands of web pages that have been banned due to copyright infringement.

Says the IPKat, this is an absolute outrage!  Quite right, says Merpel, and spare a thought for how much reading our Turkish readers will have to do in order to catch up with all the IPKat's posts while the ban was operative.

A further report on this ban can be found on Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review here, which also records a response from Blogger's owner Google here.

Thanks are also due to the Kat's friend Mehmet Artemel, for the kind supply of links to this news.

Ban the Bomb here
Ban the YouTube here
Ban the Plastic Bag here