A conflict allowances of league play football in Turkey has led to a Turkish court has ordered the blocking of the popular blogging platform "Blogger", which has thus become a victim of the failures of the Turkish justice ; to anger of hundreds of thousands of netizens in the country, who regard as disproportionate.
A court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir this week ordered the blocking of Blogger in Turkey, owned by Google that hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs in Turkey under the blogspot.com domain. The measure was enacted after a lawsuit filed by the satellite provider Digiturk, which owns the broadcasting rights for Turkish football league in the Eurasian country, and appealed to the courts after finding that several bloggers used their blogs to relay illegally meeting of the Turkish Süper Lig.
"This is a disproportionate measure by the court, and certainly with an enormous impact on all citizens to comply with the law, "he told the Turkish daily Hurriyet Wednesday Yaman Akdeniz, a defender of the rights of Internet users, remembering that millions of bloggers and blog readers Turks would be affected by the decision Diyarbakır court.
currently estimated that over 600,000 Turkish Internet users have a blog on Blogger, and at least 18 million Internet users who visit these blogs, the latest figures cited by Akdeniz. ; Unless it is contested, it is expected that the measure comes into force definitively in the coming days, although it is affecting million Internet users in Turkey.
"If two people planning a criminal activity by phone, should we ban the use of phones around the country?" Asked Deniz Ergürel meanwhile, secretary general of Turkey's Media Association. "We believe this is the wrong approach to the issue, and that deprives millions of bloggers and internet users to write and share their ideas online," said Ergürel, which is also a "blogger" habitual. In his view, the illegal act is a violation of the rights acquired by Digiturk not be ignored, but the solution can not undergo a complete closure Blogger.
In a statement Wednesday, Digiturk defended himself saying that he had been obliged to submit the case to court after determining that the illegal broadcasting of the matches of the Turkish football league continued through several blogs hosted on Blogger, although it had issued several warnings about the issue to their managers. "Digiturk has spent 321 million dollars to get the rights to broadcast matches of the Spor Toto Süper Lig. However, the parties (with rights) Digiturk Lig TV and are issued by certain websites, ignoring all laws about it, "said the Turkish company in its press release. "Thus, we ask the court to shut down these websites, and the court decided to deny access to them, after finding that although they had taken out all legal proceedings, violations (emission rights) had not ceased ".
The move however has angered hundreds of thousands of Internet users and bloggers, and is one of the most discussed these days by the Turkish community in the network. A Facebook group created under the name "Do not touch my blog", has achieved almost 9,000 followers in less than two days. Other similar campaigns are underway in other sites and networks social, and Twitter, where the topic is also included as one of the most popular among users Turks.
"The people who pirate broadcasts are experts in this. Closing one site or a few will not solve the problem, because they will find other ways to do it," said Güldem Zeybek, blogger, quoted by the daily Hürriyet . "What happens to us, the innocent bloggers? Here, without having done anything, we assume the guilt of being criminals. No right of any company should take precedence over my right to express my ideas," he said.
