{"id":1422,"date":"2011-04-29T23:11:52","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T20:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2011-04-29T23:11:55","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T20:11:55","slug":"tibs-forbidden-words-list-inconsistent-with-law-say-turkish-web-providers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/?p=1422","title":{"rendered":"T\u0130B’s ‘forbidden words list’ inconsistent with law, say Turkish web providers"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\u0130B’s ‘forbidden words list’ inconsistent with law, say Turkish web providers – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday, April 29, 2011
\nERISA DAUTAJ \u015eENERDEM
\nISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/p>\n

The T\u0130B sent a list of 138 words Thursday to Turkish web-hosting firms, urging them to ban Internet domains that include such words.<\/p>\n

The T\u0130B sent a list of 138 words Thursday to Turkish web-hosting firms, urging them to ban Internet domains that include such words.<\/p>\n

A request made Thursday by the Turkish Telecommunications Directorate, or T\u0130B, to ban a total of 138 words from Turkish Internet domain names has no legal basis and has left companies unsure of what action to take, according to experts.<\/p>\n

\u2018Providing a list and urging companies to take action to ban sites that contain the words and threatening to punish them if they don’t has no legal grounds,\u2019 Yaman Akdeniz, a cyber-rights activist and a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, told the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News & Economic Review in a phone interview Friday. Akdeniz said no authority could decide that an action was illegal just by association.<\/p>\n

The T\u0130B sent a list of 138 words Thursday to Turkish web-hosting firms, urging them to ban Internet domains that include such words. The directive leaves tens of thousands of Turkish websites facing the risk of closure.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hosting companies are not responsible for monitoring for illegal activities; their liability arises only if they take no action after being notified by the T\u0130B \u2013 or any other party \u2013 and are asked to remove certain illegal content,\u2019 Akdeniz said.<\/p>\n

The T\u0130B cited the Internet ban law number 5651 and related legislation as the legal ground for its request. The law, however, does not authorize firms to take action related to banning websites. <\/p>\n

\u2018The hosting company is not responsible for controlling the content of the websites it provides domains to or researching\/exploring on whether there is any illegal activity or not. They are responsible for removing illegal content when they are informed and there is the technical possibility of doing so,\u2019 according to Article 5 of the law.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, following the heated debate surround the \u2018forbidden\u2019 list, the T\u0130B said the list was sent to hosting firms for informatory purposes. But the statement further confused the situation, as the body threatened companies with punishment if they did not obey its directions regarding the list in the first letter sent to service providers.<\/p>\n

\u2018The T\u0130B\u2019s press statement is not clear, nor is it satisfactory,\u2019 Akdeniz said, adding that it was a pity the directorate was still standing behind the list.<\/p>\n

The T\u0130B\u2019s action is inconsistent with the related law and bylaw, and its subsequent statement contradicted both the request and the legislation,\u2019 Devrim Demirel, founder and chief executive officer of BerilTech, Turkey’s leading domain name and business intelligence company, told the Daily News on Friday. He added they were still confused and did not know what their next move would be. <\/p>\n

Demirel said they had no answers to the questions from hundreds of his company\u2019s customers from Turkey and abroad, including Google\u2019s com.tr and Yahoo\u2019s com.tr services.<\/p>\n

The T\u0130B\u2019s letter said the body would punish companies for not taking action to ban domains containing \u2018forbidden words,\u2019 but it did not specify what kind of punishment it implied, according to Demirel. \u2018It is still not clear whether there will be administrative or other sanctions.\u2019<\/p>\n

Noting that the implementation of the T\u0130B\u2019s request on the forbidden names list could have many negative technical implications, Demirel said, \u2018I think the T\u0130B personnel who worked on the issues related to banning access are not endowed with the necessary technical knowledge and skills.\u2019<\/p>\n

He said customers had not taken any illegal action, but domains that include the words T\u0130B wants to filter and then ban could incur losses.<\/p>\n

\u2018There is no guarantee in the existing related legislation that I will not be asked to compensate the company in such a case,\u2019 Demirel said, adding that there were many other complex technicalities like this one that could emerge should the T\u0130B\u2019s request be implemented.<\/p>\n

Demirel said he received T\u0130B\u2019s letter via an email, which he said was neither ethical nor secure.<\/p>\n

\u2018Do we have to make a technical check of the sender\u2019s identity each time the T\u0130B sends us an email? Requests with such important implications should be sent officially to each company\u2019s office address, with the respective seal and signatures,\u2019 he said. <\/p>\n

Despite the problems, Demirel said banning websites in itself was the wrong approach. \u2018Banning access to websites is in itself a censuring service.\u2019<\/p>\n

The T\u0130B\u2019s latest request also implied censure, he said.<\/p>\n

Banned words have many scratching heads<\/p>\n

The effect of the T\u0130B\u2019s request could see the closure of many websites that include a number of words. For example, the website \u2018donanimalemi.com\u2019 (hardwareworld.com) could be banned because the domain name has the word \u2018animal\u2019 in it; likewise, \u2018sanaldestekunitesi.com,\u2019 (virtualsupportunit.com) could be closed down because of the word \u2018anal.\u2019 Websites will also be forbidden from using the number 31 in their domain names because it is slang for male masturbation.<\/p>\n

Some banned English words include \u2018beat,\u2019 \u2018escort,\u2019 \u2018homemade,\u2019 \u2018hot,\u2019 \u2018nubile,\u2019 \u2018free\u2019 and \u2018teen.\u2019 Some other English words would also be banned because of their meanings in Turkish: \u2018pic,\u2019 short for picture, is banned because it means \u2018bastard\u2019 in Turkish. The past tense of the verb \u2018get\u2019 is also banned because \u2018got\u2019 means \u2018butt\u2019 in Turkish. Haydar, a very common Alevi name for men, is also banned because it means penis in slang.<\/p>\n

\u2018Gay\u2019 and its Turkish pronunciation, \u2018gey;\u2019 \u2018\u00e7\u0131plak\u2019 (naked); \u2018itiraf\u2019 (confession); \u2018liseli\u2019 (high school student); \u2018nefes\u2019 (breath) and \u2018yasak\u2019 (forbidden) are some of the other banned words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

T\u0130B’s ‘forbidden words list’ inconsistent with law, say Turkish web providers – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review Friday, April 29, 2011 ERISA DAUTAJ \u015eENERDEM ISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News The T\u0130B sent a list of 138 words Thursday to Turkish web-hosting firms, urging them to ban Internet domains that include such words. The T\u0130B sent a list of 138…<\/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":[22,23,6,177,17,11,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5651-nolu-kanun","category-blocking-and-filtering","category-censorship","category-domain-name-seizure","category-tib","category-turkey","category-yaman-akdeniz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wjA8-mW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","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=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1423,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}