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Turkey Bans RapidShare and FileServe

As Turkish citizens look forward to wholesale Internet filtering from August 2011, the government has already moved to block the URLs of two major file-sharing sites.

The domains of both RapidShare and FileServe are now banned in Turkey following a decision by a court in the capital, Ankara.

Turkish Internet users who try to access either site are presented with a page informing them that they are blocked.

Both sites are accused of providing access to pornography and breaches of Turkey’s obscenity laws.

From August 22nd 2011, all Internet users in Turkey will be forced to choose from a selection of four Internet filtering packages.

The packages, which will be offered under a regulation by the country’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority, will block websites. The criteria under which they operate, however, will not be made public.

Read More (Turkish)

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  • AnonBuddhist

    what a bunch of Turkeys.

    • Attaturk

      Turks are Turds

  • http://thegift73.wordpress.com/ Richard Gailey

    “Both sites are accused of providing access to pornography and breaches of Turkey’s obscenity laws.”

    That’s dumb. Following that logic they should ban all internet access. What is it with retarded politicians making laws about subjects they fail to understand.

    • Guest

      Maybe they should ban human bodies because they are used in producing pornography… also photo and video cameras….

      • http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja

        They need to ban DNA too. Our main role here is to have kids. That involves some naughty things ;)

        Also, the internet exists because of p0rn so you’d need to ban the internet if you want to prevent access to p0rn.

    • Noah C.

      Turkey is largely Islamic, you must understand. Pornography is one of the things Islam strictly bans, so this is not on a grounds of “copyright” or “filesharing,” but more on a grounds of religious “protection,” if you could call it that. The Islamic States are more or less acting like the 15th Century Catholic Vatican of Islam.

      • http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja

        Brilliant analysis. It’s unfortunate that they are 5 centuries behind the rest. I know very nice Muslims and they are more evolved than that.

      • Anonymous

        But it is a nice example of censorship. Something that the G8 frown upon. And it also demonstrates that politics will just use laws that seem unjust to many just so they can have the feeling of control. Some disagree with downloading, in other countries it’s legal, some disagree with pornography and others may be against the church or whatever else you can think of. Exactly why censorship should not ever be allowed.

        They are making two perfectly good file lockers unusable for all people of all religions in that country. And how do they think they can ever merge into the EU like this? And don’t come with CP arguments because that should be stopped at the source.

      • ndmushroom

        Turkey may be “largely islamic”, but it has nothing to do with more “hardcore” islamist states like the arab ones. However, it has a long history in censorship, something not even its EU bid has managed to soften. Bear in mind that while this particular decision seems to have been made by an islamist judge (if you want to stop porn, storage sites are probably not even on the top 100 list of sites to ban), the first (and most persistent) turkish site block concerns Youtube (and, for a very little while, Facebook) and it’s related to insulting content on Kemal Attaturk, whom the “secular”, i.e. non-islamist, political parties in Turkey regard almost as a god (or Saddam, for a more recent example: can’t say bad things about him, framed portraits of him pretty much everywhere etc.)
        I appreciate the effort to make Islam seem like the root of all problems (you wouldn’t be American, would you?) but in this case it’s a lot more complicated than that.

        • http://twitter.com/Dreamreaver Dreamreaver

          “and it’s related to insulting content on Kemal Attaturk, whom the “secular”, i.e. non-islamist, political parties in Turkey regard almost as a god (or Saddam, for a more recent example: can’t say bad things about him, framed portraits of him pretty much everywhere etc.)”

          Sounds like a personality cult to me…not any better.

      • None

        It’s understandable if it is islamic, but that is like the U.S. (largely christian) banning porn. It is unethical in modern day society.

        • Noah C.

          Saying the United States is largely Christian is a seriously bad joke. Just because it’s a large group doesn’t mean it controls the state, like the Vatican DID in up to the seventeenth century. This is a reply all above too. I said what I said because there are similar things happening in Iran, on a much higher level albeit, but under the name of religion. For instance, Iran wants to create itself a new internet to censor pornography so they can keep Islamic Men from looking at it. And I’m not kidding.

  • markie

    Blocking sites because they host pornography. That got to be the funniest thing i’ve ever heard. I guess they don’t know much about the internet in Turkey.

    The internet is for porn.

  • SomeAsian

    But, but, but…the internet is a giant porn machine. This makes no sense, they are banning its primary function!! This is like cutting the wings off all birds! What will they do if the can’t fly, and what will the internet do if it can’t transmit petabytes of porn???!!!!!! AAAAAAAaahhhhhhDAL;DSFKADSJFKFkdfkjtuaeir;.vadvlla

    • Anonymous

      Exactly, do they have a list with ALL the porn sites on the net? Do they block them all? All the porn blogs? TOR? VPNs? Hell it would be easier to just shut the net down…

  • Anonymous

    I expect to read an article in September about how the main effect of that law is an increase in VPN usage.

  • Joe-is-a-spass

    Turkey wants to join the European Union? ROFL plz…If they cant even have freedom of press what makes them think they would be allowed into. Morons.

    • Zzzzzz

      This will get them in sooner, it’ll be seen as a shining example and used as an excuse for us to follow suit.

    • fuck this $hit

      In fact they have much less freedom of press than us but it doesn’t mean EU is freedom of press’s heaven.

      WAKE UP

  • Joe-is-a-spass

    Turkey wants to join the European Union? ROFL plz…If they cant even have freedom of press what makes them think they would be allowed into. Morons.

  • Bill Hicks

    Kill that filthy mongrel you must call ‘King’ and this ends now…

  • Pingback: Turquía prohibe el acceso a Rapidshare y Fileserve mientras prepara su paquetes de filtrados a la red — Bitelia

  • Pingback: Turquía prohibe el acceso a Rapidshare y Fileserve mientras prepara su paquetes de filtrados a la red |

  • Pingback: Turquía bloquea a RapidShare y FileServer por culpa del porno | OhMyGeek!

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  • J White

    These two sites have been blocked in China too, alot of lots of other prominent file sharing sites like filesonic. Sigh.

  • http://www.liquidpanorama.com Medusa No Kimi

    J White anyone who has any sense can either purchase a vpn or use one of those free proxy websites to access practically anything. Not to mention just using tor or searching freenet

  • Anonymous

    still trying to figure this out, I was blocked from FS and RS last week. This morning I am downloading without block from FS. Has anything changed (come to their senses, or is just luck this morning?)

  • Nigas

    “The criteria under which they operate, however, will not be made public.”

    so much for transparency….

  • Tarkan

    Many people in Turkey think that it is not necessary to join European Union. We see the monetary problems in our neighbor, Greece. Also number of racists in European countries are increasing. I do not think they will let Turkey join EU.

    • DimP

      The monetary problem was a scam by Greek “Politicians” to sell everything available in Greece, so they can be rich. EU, US & IMF are behind this, in cooperation with the Greek assh… ehm, Primeminister.

      • Tarkan

        If a country sell everything, they will not become rich, They only pay their debits. Also they will lose their real estates. Germany and other countries are angry about this monetary problem in Greece. This problem makes Euro to lose its value against USD.

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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