a brief note for the Anti-web censorship meeting

Three kingpins of web censorship in Turkey:

Fethi Şimşek, Binali Yıldırım, Tayfun Acarer
via

The meeting took place at Kadir Has University. It has a New Media Department. But the meeting was not explicitly supported by the department.
Coffee was not allowed: A person in charge rudely warned me that “Floor has been cleaned and coffee is not allowed”. Secondly, wireless for visitors did not work. These are my complaints against the hosting institution. The organizers themselves are cool people and I suppose we need to find cool places to host events like this.

A declaration is being prepared and much of the discussion centered around it. I have to state that everybody knows we have too limited power against statal institutions. Most of the planned activities are intended to increase awareness and shape the information overload. Info about the Declaration and works about it can be found here. Friendfeed discussions can be found here. A wiki site is also built to collaborate on anti-censorship activities…

Possible actions:

1- Declaration, 2- Street actions, 3- making and spreading of Music videos that criticise censorship, 4- Complaining Turkey at OSCE, 5- Starting citizens cases against the censorship authorities, 6- campaigns in alliance with Internet cafes, 7- Using traditional media channels, 8- Social media campaigns…

Article 5651 is an evil article to be used in web censorship but even that’s violated in some cases. The State is sometimes illegally censoring without excusing herself with article 5651.

There are also unlawful filtering all over Turkey: internet cafes, universities, municipalities filter web content without relying on any legal procedure…

*********

The Register: DoS attack stuffs Turkey?s internet censors

DoS attack stuffs Turkey?s internet censors ? The Register

Hackers protest net interference
By Jane Fae Ozimek, 18th June 2010 15:12 GMT

Access to the internet in Turkey is becoming increasingly ragged, as growing state censorship collides with retaliation by anti-censorship hackers, leading to difficulties both in viewing sites and applying key online functions.

Earlier this month, The Register reported that multiple Google services including Google Translate, Google Docs and Google Books were inaccessible. This appears to be a consequence of a request that Turkish ISPs block access to certain IP addresses associated with YouTube. The request was issued by the Telecommunications Communication Presidency on 3 June.