Turkey killed the video star
A Turkish court has ordered the shut-down of YouTube just days after it was un-blocked following a 30 month exile from the country.
The court ordered the ban after videos of the former opposition leader of Turkey's Republican People's Party, Deniz Baykal appeared in a video on the site, apparently showing him with a female lawmaker in a bedroom, Business Week reported. Baykal quit his position in May.
Turkey's telecommunications regulator was reportedly instructed by the court to ask YouTube to remove the offending video or face being blocked, according to a local news agency. The country has only lifted the ban on YouTube in the last week.
The site was last blocked in May 2008 after a court found videos on the site had insulted the modern founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which is a legal offense in the country.
YouTube reportedly reposted the videos that led to the ban, making them accessible to people outside of Turkey after deciding that the videos did not breach copyright law, according to a spokeswoman for Google Turkey.
However, web-savvy Turks can dodge the ban by using proxy-websites. Gabriel Ramuglia, who is a manager of hundreds of proxy sites, told a Turkish newspaper that YouTube traffic from Turkey has plunged by half in the last 3 days following the ban being lifted, consequently hitting his revenues hard, Business Week reported.
It is thought that some 4,000 websites are currently banned in Turkey.
