{"id":1340,"date":"2011-03-09T21:37:35","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T18:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2011-03-10T11:12:26","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T08:12:26","slug":"hurriyet-daily-news-european-court-asks-turkey-to-explain-its-internet-bans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/?p=1340","title":{"rendered":"Hurriyet Daily News: European court asks Turkey to explain its Internet bans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hurriyet Daily News: European court asks Turkey to explain its Internet bans<\/a><\/p>\n

Wednesday, March 9, 2011
\nERISA DAUTAJ \u015eENERDEM
\nISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/p>\n

A European court has asked Turkish authorities to explain their use of the country\u2019s law to ban websites, responding to applications by two complainants who say the bans violate their right to freedom of expression.<\/p>\n

\u2018Users of different websites are being punished because others infringe legal provisions,\u2019 said complainant Yaman Akdeniz, a cyber-rights activist and a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University. He applied to the European Court of Human Rights on April 6, arguing that the Turkish government\u2019s ban on the website Last.fm violated his rights.<\/p>\n

The decision to consider the case is a landmark one, Akdeniz said, explaining that it was the first time the court had taken up a complaint related to Internet bans.<\/p>\n

\u2018The court\u2019s final decision will set an important precedent for all Council of Europe member countries,\u2019 Akdeniz told the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Responding to the applications by Akdeniz and another Turkish complainant, the European court issued a request last month to Turkish authorities, asking them to answer by June 9, three questions of a general nature about the use of Turkish law to ban certain websites.<\/p>\n

\u2018The court asked Turkish authorities for explanations regarding the application of legal provisions to ban websites,\u2019 Akdeniz told the Daily News.<\/p>\n

Fellow complainant Ahmet Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m, a 28-year-old doctoral student at Bo\u011fazi\u00e7i University in Istanbul, applied to the European court Jan. 12, 2010, saying his personal website on Google Sites, which he used to publish his academic work, had been banned by Turkey. Both Akdeniz and Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m said they appealed to the European court after having exhausted all domestic legal avenues.<\/p>\n

Both applications were made before Turkish authorities\u2019 recent ban of the popular blogging platform Blogger. The website, a property of Google Inc., was blocked in response to a complaint by the satellite television provider Digiturk about bloggers illegally posting football matches broadcast on Digiturk\u2019s Lig TV channel.<\/p>\n

The decision to ban Lastfm also involved a rights dispute; authorities used Turkish Law No. 5846 on artistic and intellectual works to issue the ban, arguing that the site had been used to illegally publish artistic works to which the user did not own the rights.<\/p>\n

According to Akdeniz, who initiated the Lastfm-related case, authorities should identify and punish individuals who break the law, rather than punishing all Internet users by issuing blanket bans on websites.<\/p>\n

Lastfm was banned in Turkey on Sept. 19, 2009, following a lawsuit brought to court by the Turkish Phonographic Industry Society, or M\u00dc-YAP.<\/p>\n

In his complaint related to Google Sites, Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m argued that Turkish authorities sought to ban access to the website for breaching provisions of Turkish Law No. 5651, on the regulation of publications and copyright infringements on the Internet. He said this violates his right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s controversial Internet bans have been a subject of much debate by experts as well as by millions of Turkish Internet users who have lost access to popular sites. Experts have criticized the implementation of Law No. 5651 and related laws to ban websites, saying that those who break laws must be tracked down and punished for their actions, rather than making all Turkish internet users pay the price.<\/p>\n

Questions from the European court<\/p>\n

The first question posed to Turkish authorities by the European court was related to Akdeniz\u2019s application. \u2018As a user, can Mr. Akdeniz claim to be a victim of an infringement to rights guaranteed by Article 10 of the Convention?\u2019 it asked.<\/p>\n

Another question dealt with whether the complainants\u2019 freedom of expression had been infringed upon, particularly their right to receive or communicate information or ideas according to Article 10, Paragraph 2 of the Convention. The European court also asked Turkish authorities whether Turkish law permitted it to put an end to unjustified infringements on freedom of expression, and whether it had responded to the demands of Article 13 of the Convention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hurriyet Daily News: European court asks Turkey to explain its Internet bans Wednesday, March 9, 2011 ERISA DAUTAJ \u015eENERDEM ISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News A European court has asked Turkish authorities to explain their use of the country\u2019s law to ban websites, responding to applications by two complainants who say the bans violate their right to freedom of expression. \u2018Users…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,115,23,6,5,53,21,46,89,96,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5651-nolu-kanun","category-aihm","category-blocking-and-filtering","category-censorship","category-dusunce-ozgurlugu","category-echr","category-erisim-engelleme","category-freedom-of-expression","category-google-sites","category-last-fm","category-turkey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wjA8-lC","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1347,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/1347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}