Tube You
That's right: All you corny motherfuckers making clownish videos of George Washington, watch out. Insulting the founder of a nation can get you in big trouble.
You Tube learned this recently when Thailand and Turkey started punching/kicking it in the taint, angry that the young video empire would not take down satirical videos mocking the former's current monarch and the latter's Leading Historical Badass (besides Suleiman), Ataturk.
I wonder what Thomas "The MAN" Paine would have said about both You Tube's woes and Tim O'Reilly's plan for a new era of internet Civility.
[Oh, and thanks, Dylan--you rock more than even granite rocks... But, you know, you metaphorically "rock;" it's not like you're a naturally occurring aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.
Other people: Dylan recommended that I check out Paul Collins' The Trouble With Tom, which I did. I now heartily endorse it as new Required Reading.]
Anyway, more about those nasty censorship gremlins in Thailand and Turkey to be found below...
From the NYTimes, April 5, 2007
"Thailand Bans YouTube," By THOMAS FULLER
BANGKOK, April 4 — Thailand’s military-appointed government blocked access to YouTube and several other Internet sites on Wednesday in a crackdown on material that denigrates the country’s monarch.
“We have blocked YouTube because it contains a video insulting to our king,†said Winai Yoosabai, head of the censorship unit at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.
Thailand’s ban on YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, came after YouTube’s owner, Google, refused to remove the video clip, the communications minister, Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, said.
The clip, crude and amateurish and lasting less than a minute, depicts the king with clown features painted onto his face and an image of feet pasted over his head, an insulting gesture in Thailand.
The Thai crackdown follows similar moves elsewhere this year against YouTube, the Internet site that allows users to easily upload, share and watch video clips.
Last month, Turkey cut off access to the site for several days to block a video deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Insulting Ataturk is a criminal offense in Turkey.
A court in Brazil ordered access to YouTube blocked for several days in January after clips of a prominent model cavorting in the sea with her lover kept reappearing on the site.
...
In Thailand, insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej is a criminal offense. Last week, a Swiss man convicted of vandalizing images of the king and Queen Sirikit was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Since the military government came to power with the overthrow of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last September, it has banned Web sites, instructed the media to minimize reporting about Mr. Thaksin and has at times blacked out broadcasts of international news channels like CNN. Reporting in newspapers remains lively and apparently uncensored, except for criticism of the monarchy.
Mr. Winai said his department was looking for the person responsible for posting the clip of the king, which had been viewed more than 16,000 times and was posted by someone using the name Paddidda.
Pornnapa Wongakanit contributed reporting.
worth noting that that george washington vid was made by the guy who did "wizard people, dear readers"
http://www.thatsplenty.com/2006/05/harry_potter_with_the_old_will.html