WTF you mean they should have stood their ground ass…those videos were offensive to a certain ethnic group and removal was not an option…not to mention they were agains YouTube’s TOS.

Huser,

Firstly I think you need to chill. Secondly this will now have a snowball effect on any video that offends anyone or any group etc.

I wonder if other video sharing sites suffer from the same pressures…

Removing the videos will do nothing to change the opinion of either of the parties involved or affected by the video. It only means that YouTube can expect more bans and more bending backwards to keep the service unblocked. If you want to stop these incidents, you need to change opinion, not ban the tools that offer a chance to voice your opinion.

yea. next will ban gay people videos, then straight love and then south park, cause “it’s offensive”. and then we will go back at .txt

http://word.sc/sophomoric

Glad they lifted the ban.

I couldn’t imagine being banned from some sites like folks in other countries.

Freedom of speech is so trumpeted by Americans. Loud-mouth vulgar hateful speech - ok, express yourself. But you aren’t *entitled* to use mass media to do it.

Well, though this is a win,if governments go ban happy there might be a problem.

Geomark it’s not even a free speech issue– it’s YouTube’s site, they aren’t obligated to let anyone say anything at any time.

It’s another in a string of bad business decisions because now anyone offended by anything has a case, and they’ll have to listen to them all, and it’ll likely hurt the material on the site.

For Turkey it’s bad, because they gave up their freedom to avoid getting offended.

Huser, I get offended all the time, my ancestors and myself are constantly and consistently portrayed as stupid or evil. But I’m so glad you’ll be there to back me up as I pressure everyone to stop taking shots at white Christians.

Speaking as a Turk, I thought the court order was inane. Freedom of speech is really not as limited in Turkey as some people might believe. I think that this was a case of a poor judgement on the court’s side. The sedition law is, as I see it, designed to combat theocrats, not racist teenagers.

I am hopeful that the humiliation that cases like this bring will spark a reform in the law.

A decision either way would leave someone unhappy. IMHO, they should have kept the video. People don’t have to watch it if they don’t want to. They should have waited for the people of Turkey to voice their opinion to the government.

Why did you remove the post where you described all ways to download a video from you tube? ..I think you said you don’t want you to be put in google PR’s black list..so you have priority to dollars over your moral values (free speech ??!!) …youtube is doing same..why should they keep those few or one video in order to lose 72 million turks ?

Freedom of speech…. Sometimes you can lie. Far other countries, you can’t lie, cheat, and steal.

“When videos are retarded, only retards will have videos”

Wow, this is sad.

What is next? Videos against sports teams? Videos against political parties? Videos against pets? (Ok, I am kidding). This is stupid though…it is sad when people can’t take a joke.

They should have let the ban stand … why does Turkey get to decide what I can and can’t view?

Considering 2.4% (which puts it in a 9th place) of YouTube visitors are from Turkey; why wouldn’t they remove the content?

YouTube is the 7th top site visited by Turkish people.

Via: Alexa

We have to respect cultural differences. What is acceptable in the US may not be ok elsewhere.

It’s not ok to offend a single person let alone an entire group or country…good move YouTube…

How soon before You Tube removes all the 911 videos showing reporters announcing its collapse before it happened?

You Tube did best in the interest of people of two nations. Freedom of speech, so many times (not always) becomes a lame excuse for things which do more harm than good. I am sure those videos would have done more bad than good.

This is not the first incident. Two years ago, Turkish Parlement passed a legislation which forced website owners to print out all the pages in their websites and give them to government people. Not for once, we were supposed to do it everyday.

This is called sense of humor. You just don’t get it.

MA, with all due respect, I think you’re mixing up two disparate issues here.

The first issue is whether you subscribe to Milton Friedman’s shareholder theory, which states a company should act solely to maximize profits for their shareholders, or to Edward Freeman’s stakeholder theory, which states a company should act to balancing the interests of all its stakeholders (including customers, citizens of governments where they provide services, etc.).

Most people in capitalist America subscribe to Mr. Friedman’s theory, whereas more socialist-leaning countries in Europe are more likely to side with Mr. Freeman.

In your post, it’s ambiguous which side of that argument you’re on.

The second question, assuming you subscribe to the shareholder theory (I’ll go out on a limb here) is what move will most benefit YT shareholders in the long-term.

Here, I agree with your point, and i’ll take the liberty of paraphrasing you if I may - that while YT may have appeased the Turkish government in the short-term, and thus reinstituted their 7th largest audience, the costs of waging FOS battles going forward could easily outweigh any short-term benefits they’ve achieved with this move.

I don’t know if you really looked into the issue…But Ataturk who is the founder of the republic of Turkey,was made out to be gay….Now i don’t have any problems with gay people….But when a man who isn’t gay,is called gay then it’s an insult….And if you insult a man whose actions saved millions of people from their enemies,you insult those millions of people too…It’s same as George washington being insulted;wouldn’t american people be angry(rightly so)? Yes,they would be…So that’s why youtube was right to erase the video….
And before this video,there were/are lots of videos insulting to Turks,but did they get removed?No and for sake of freedom of speech,youtube was right not to remove them….
However there should be a line drawn about freedom of speech.When you insult other people,you will also violate their rights….And preserving rights,IMO is what the freedom of speech is about…

Note:I don’t approve of the court order either…It was an idiotic decision….Do problems go away when you turn a blind eye on them?No….

I can’t believe what these people do, why they make compromises? It’s terrible!

Actions like this is what makes Turkey still light years away from joining the EU….

mike, please don’t try to get political, your clear lack of understanding of global issues is so evident in a mere two paragraph post. Stick to trying to give us tech news, without your personal bias.

And by the way,Sophomoric??Give me a break…

It’s all about the money, the YouTube business bods sat down to decide which option would bring in the most money, remove the video to get the ban lifted and get the Turkish peeps back on line or keep the video and hope the ban gets lifted eventually anyway.
Don’t try to bring politics or ethics into it - that’s bound to start arguments and you’re over complicating a simple financial decision.
It was the same with Google in China.

Well people love to be righteous…So I tried to see things on their side…
But you are right; i think money was,is and always will be the real reason….

“We have to respect cultural differences. What is acceptable in the US may not be ok elsewhere.”

Um, no we don’t. I have absolutely no respect for some third-world country’s complaints about how their founder was called gay on a website.

I would suggest the government of Turkey and its apologists on this forum suck it up and stop getting their panties in a bunch every time Turkey is “insulted.”

I don’t understand why it is called ‘freedom of speech’ to allow Greeks insult the most important leader in Turkish history…

Turkey should not be allowed to join the European Union as long as it does stuff like this. A vast majority of EU citizens do not want Turkey to become a member — many of them are prejudiced against Muslims. But Turkey is losing the support of the more progressive citizens precisely because it continues to repress freedom of expression.

Hello to all this peopol on Technology Crunch; my name is Christophoros Georgilakis Zaharias. I am father of Vassiliatis Dmitrios, damned young teenage skatouli who put with moronic friends these videos up on the BoobTube (this is what call we it at the Greek Dept of Economy).

I no like that he do what he do, even though Attaturk wear pink little daisy undergarments one day and polka dot skirt next. I gonna keep heem inside for six full days, during this time he miss *all* soccer match and high school party, no excepts, if or butt.

We must respect all of the free speeches, but I no want to fight Turkmen again; my Papou’s Papou says the fighting was no good.

Well, the turkey government and the turkey courts are 70% ultra nationalistic - this is why journalists, christs and kurds are under extreme pressure in the turkey. The Turkey is fighting a war to their own people and is arresting and torturing critics. In the last decade they killed some tenthousend kurds… This is a FACT. And this incident is just one more reason why they will never ever get into the EU.

Ediz: did you just accuse George Washington of being gay? (Gasp…)

We should ban Techcrunch from the US until Mike removes your comment ….

Weeeee …. are we on the slippery slope yet?

This is hardly the first such case that has come up. India has taken several such steps already:
1) Blocked access to blogger from India
2) Ordered a removal of You Tube video mocking Gandhi in bad taste
3) Ordered obfuscation of Google Maps of sensitive Indian defense establishments
4) Numerous Orkut altercations

Mike, before you make statements to the one similar in your last para, you need to be able to relate to the cultural mindset of the other community. What you consider freedom of press here may not be acceptable in another country. What you consider normal / entertaining may be outright offensive in some other country. While I havent seen those videos in question myself, I wont be able to relate to it anyways (the angst of Turkish govt.)

If an MNC like Google wants to expand internationally, it has to be mindful of such intricasies and has to abide by them. Else, they would face a huge uphill battle in establishing a presence in that country.

I had expected a much more mature take from you about such an issue. What can I say, I’m disappointed.

wow…You guys have wrapped up together a good bunch of nothing…At least some of you are honest,”thirdworld-country” and such…While some of the others are more evasive:”did you just accuse George Washington of being gay?(Gasp…)” and kurd killings…And i gotta say Eu talk is much more ironic…Never mind…

I gotta say that you should just go on making fun of others and not complain until someone insults your own country…I’m just wasting time saying this but: saying things without showing proof,exaggerating things and writing “fact” with capital letters aren’t gonna make your claims come true…..

So bye all and have a happy time with your apathy….

“Mike, before you make statements to the one similar in your last para, you need to be able to relate to the cultural mindset of the other community. What you consider freedom of press here may not be acceptable in another country. What you consider normal / entertaining may be outright offensive in some other country.”

Totally agreed - in Sudan YouTube might feature a how-to video on female genital mutilation, or in Afghanistan maybe a hilarious video compilation of the stoning of rape victims! It’s really all about your cultural mindset; there’s really no place for the “cultural discrimination” and “value judgments” taking place here.

I agree with the consensus; YouTube should have stood their ground.

Someone posted in their blog a while back about how YouTube doesn’t really censor violent videos, but show a little too much leg (or a bare ass), and you’re pulled.

Personally, I’m against 98% of all censorship — if someone doesn’t want to view it, then don’t view it!

I agree with Robert it’s all about choices if there is soemthing that i dont want to do then i should not do it, same should be the way with the you tube videos.

And the Cypriots end up getting the last laugh!

But in all seriousness, Google made a huge mistake in this case. Now there’s a precedent set for removing content deemed as being offensive to relatively small groups of people.

What’s going to happen when foreign governments consider content that comes from a new found YouTube licensing deal to be inappropriate? Will these governments oppose large media organizations that make their content available on YouTube that happen to possible offend some groups?

It all comes down to determining what really makes something offensive. It reminds me of Potter Stewart’s memorable statements in the US Supreme Court case of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) in that “hard-core pornography” was hard to define, but that “I know it when I see it.”

The vast majority of the YouTube watching world will have no idea that these videos in question are offensive at all. But now anyone can claim such and demand action. I agree with Mike — it sets a terrible precedence.

This sets a terrible precedent for YouTube, who should have stood their ground. The original videos were sophomoric jabs at Turkey from Greeks, none of which should have led to a ban in the first place. For YouTube to agree to remove the videos shows that they’ll be soft on these issues in the future, and it will lead to a never ending series of headaches for the company. This is also yet another blow to freedom of speech in Turkey.

Hi Michael,

While this may set some sort of short term precedent for YouTube that looks like it’s the manner in which it may behave when faced with issues such as these for eternity, I think we all need to take a look at the larger picture; the Internet as a democratizer, cultural influences of other countries and the unintended consequences. Learning, perhaps a little, from the past and considering our actions in the future with regards to how we’ll behave with a very potent ambassador - the Internet.

I can remember, for years, listening to critics hammer our US government, US private business; manufacturing, services, media etc, about the manner in which we seem to export US culture to foreign lands (and so it should also be said that it was just as much imported by the citizens of those foreign lands) so much so that many of these foreign governments would in turn blame the problems of their countries’ lack of economic growth and poverty of its citizenry on the US government AND US corporations importing their “hegemony” with no regard for the disruption to the local laws and traditions and respects - their culture. “It is the sinful western culture that you gobble up that is rotting us all from the inside out. It’s the US, gov’t and businesses that are the reason for our decay, poverty and third world status. You must rebel against this bad influence that is destroying us all.”

Eventually, these people really start believing this, yet they’re helpless to do anything for them self because their government is actually the problem as it relates to the rather mean economic station of the local citizenry due to their own governments raping the treasury. Meanwhile, our government continues to look the other way with regards to the transgressions of these governments among their own populi as the lesser of two evils because some the of locals have formed their own radical resistance groups that grew rapidly based on the theme the ‘Americans and our government are in bed together and we must destroy both’.

All the while we here in the US think we must try more than ever to exert even more of our democratic influence and way of life to these countries, however subversive and disrespectful it may appear, in order to bring about change to these regions only to find out that this is actually exacerbating the problem.

If we observe different paths traveled by different countries that found themselves in these situations you find down the end of one path, North Korea which chose to wall itself off physically and technologically from the world thwarting both foreign influences and domestic uprising. In the Middle East the entire region walks a tightrope and to maintain a balance with the radical elements hanging on one end of the bar and the western democratic influences hanging on the other end those governments are forced to operate in what could best be described as a two-faced person. Eventually those types of people are found out for what they really are and dealt with by the opposing parties involved. I don’t know how this play out in the end. Sometimes I wonder if we’re not the tightrope walker ourselves.

What might be learned from this though, is our intentions, while good, of spreading democracy and freedoms in the manner and the pace in which we think they should be experienced and adopted around the world in any way, shape or form has been a factor in the circumstances that the world and the US finds itself in today. I’m not saying we’re wrong to try and extend freedoms to the oppressed around the world. It’s the manner in which and the pace we expect others to adopt that has lead to these circumstances.

No question about it.

We (the US and our freedoms and culture) can be a little too much at once for these countries trying to move towards a more open and free society and we’d be wise to learn from this which brings around to the Turkey and YouTube spat.

YouTube has done the right thing in this circumstance. If YouTube insisted on not pulling the offending clips Turkey just keeps the ban in place and goes on to explain to their people that it’s just another offense to the Middle East culture from the West as has been the case over most of the last 6 decades. More fuel for the same fire. The Internet is dangerous and subversive and it must be controlled (like the Chinese government does) because these western companies simply will not remove a piece of content that is deemed offensive to the local culture by some persons in positions of authority and perhaps a good deal of the local citizenry. China is a path that more and more countries could travel down if we do not honor some of these requests such as this one with YouTube and Turkey.

I think YouTube is wise to realize that it is only YouTube when it comes to the vastness of the Internet and it’s capabilities at this early stage of adoption around the world and that it’s not big enough to take on governments at this stage. At this stage, the most effective it can be is to let it be known that your government, Turkey in this case, has decided to block access to YouTube. That’s the kind of government you have. They do not want you to be able to question them or think any differently about them. Citizens of this country (Turkey) are not capable of dealing with material which we deem may not be suitable for you. You are not equipped for this.

Let that play on them, over and over again as each of these occurrences comes about. At the same time your able to keep user adoption growing because they can access YouTube. Eventually they become dependent on it and then when they block access again and again the people will realize that the unjust influence in their lives are their own quasi-elected or self-appointed state officials and the US is not in cahoots with them when they’ve finally had enough of the various forms of oppression.

I know we all want the Internet to spread democracy and freedom throughout just as fast as web page can be loaded but, that’s not realistic, we’ve tried these tactics in the past and I think we’d all be wise to learn a little from the past. If we don’t we’ll have a bunch a countries blocking access and filtering the Internet like China does today.

The best weapon at this point in the game is to let it be known that a government(s) blocks or filters access to the Internet or certain types of content and continue to grow. We lack patience in this country as we’ve come to expect everything almost instantly so this won’t be easy for us to take this longer term view. If, however, we fail act with the patience that YouTube is displaying and much like Google is in China by placing messages informing the Chinese Google.cn users that results have been filtered or blocked the Internet may never get off the ground in the places where it can do the most good. As a result the more and more countries could wind up looking like China and North Korea.

Youtube is turkey’s bitch

Pathetic. Do no evil (unless resisting evil requires a spinal cord).

I agree 100% with Michael. They should have stood their ground, this can only lead to much bigger problems for YouTube in the future. Banning an entire web site from a country because someone posted an offensive video is far more offensive than any video itself could ever be.

This saddens me because my wire is a Turkey. What happened to freedom?

Extortion is not uncommon with Turkey. There are several dozen videos from Turks which denigrate Armenians, but Youtube has mysteriously not deleted those videos. This is how they play the game with foreign countries in regards to the Armenian Genocide. Threaten to cut off ties, and the other party folds. Really a sad state of affairs.

the greater realm of this story is not about youtube, technology, petty amateur online video wars or whatever

it all boils down to traditional 2nd and 3rd world government dictatorships controlling it’s people

The criteria for any video submitted to YouTube should be: Is your video ad-friendly?

In fact, part of the upload process should prompt you with a list of sponsors (e.g. Verizon, Pepsi, Clearasil, Toyota) and require you to choose which one you feel most complements the subject matter of your submission.

If everyone followed those guidelines, this Turkey situation wouldn’t happen.