Thailand was the first country to announce that they would be taking advantage of Twitter’s new policy to police tweets that would be offensive or break the law in their country. The Washington Post is reporting that the country’s technology minister, Anudith Nakornthap, said the new policy was a “constructive” development.

Nakornthap said it was good that Twitter is cooperating with governments to make sure basic rights are not violated through social media.

What basic rights are being protected? Thailand has already blocked over a thousand websites that contain anti-monarchy content since December. We can only assume that they will be doing the same with tweets.

It’s only a matter of time before more countries jump on board the censorship wagon. Good thing Twitter already has a work around to remove that pesky censorship.

According to Reuters, Svay Sitha, the secretary of state of Cambodia’s Council of Ministers, wrote a letter to Google complaining about its interpretation of the area where Cambodia and Thailand touch.

"(The map) is devoid of truth and reality, and professionally irresponsible, if not pretentious," Sitha said.  "We therefore request that you withdraw the already disseminated, very wrong and not internationally recognised map and replace it.

Google probably won’t just swap in Cambodia’s favorite map and call it a day, of course; that would upset Thailand.  This isn’t the first time Google’s been caught up in a border dispute, though (China and India have involved it before, and so have India and Pakistan), meaning it’s possible to guess how this will play out.

The odds essentially favor Google coming up with three maps.  One will be for users in Cambodia, another will be for users in Thailand, and the last will be for everyone else.  The first two will show borders favoring their respective countries, while the third will use dotted lines to illustrate the dispute.

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The governments concern stems from an arrest of a monk who used a social networking site to convince a woman to visit his temple and then raped her.  "I call on Hi5 users to tell the monks to leave the site if they are found using it," junior minister Jakrapob Penkair told reporters after a Buddhist monitoring group said some monks were acting inappropriately on the site.

Thai media reported on Tuesday that a 23-year-old monk was caught raping a teenager he lured to his room via the Web site. "I am upset by this," Jakrapob said. "Any sort of misdeed caused by monks results in the deterioration of Buddhism."

Jakrapob said the government had to weigh the pros and cons of blocking the Web site from access by Buddhist monks and noted that the site was useful for online visitors to search for information and job opportunities.

Phrathepwisuthikawi, Vice Rector for Academic Affairs and Planning of Mahamakut Buddhist University said that monks should not be banned from the Web site if they are using it for religious purposes.

"If monks use the website to propagate Buddhist teaching, it’s not wrong," he explained. "It must be considered case by case."
 

The cases are unrelated, although there are similarities – videos insulting Ataturk and the king of Thailand are behind the longstanding problems.  Of course, it’s also YouTube’s users – not YouTube itself – who are behind the problems, but the Turkish and Thai governments appear to have trouble understanding (or caring about) this fact.

YouTube’s willing to skip a discussion of the matter, however; a Reporters Without Borders article relayed, “YouTube issued a statement saying it was ready to cooperate with the authorities in order to resolve the problem.”  That statement was in reference to the Turkish ban, but it’s reasonable to believe a similar approach will be taken in Thailand.

And as always, Reporters Without Borders and other free speech advocates are upset about it.  “Reporters Without Borders condemns a court ruling on 18 September ordering Internet Service Providers to block access to the video-sharing website,” the organization announced.

We’ve heard it all before from both sides.  Unfortunately, there’s no reason to believe that we won’t soon hear it all again.

When we last heard from YouTube and the government of Thailand, it appeared their tiff was over, and access to YouTube was to be restored.  (That was two months ago.  Way to move quickly, fellas.)  But from YouTube’s perspective, it could be worse, since the government had been threatening to sue.

Also, a BBC article on the matter notes, “Insulting the king is considered an offence in Thailand and is punishable with a 15-year jail sentence.”

Many outsiders feel that even the “light” censorship that has been enacted is highly questionable, however, and neither YouTube nor its owner have made any effort to explain their actions.  A Reporters Without Borders statement on the matter reads, “We note the unblocking of the video-sharing site but we ask Google to make public the contents of a compromise referred to by the Thai Information and Communications Ministry.”

It’s unlikely, to be honest, that we’ll ever see those contents.  On a related note: even as things in Thailand appear to have wrapped up, an argument concerning Nazi clips on YouTube has begun in Germany.

“The appearance or distribution of Nazi material is illegal in Germany,” notes Bloomberg’s Patrick Donahue.  As a result, Jugendschutz.de, “[a] government-sponsored Internet watchdog group,” has had to file “more than 100 complaints to YouTube about the clips.”

Another section of the Bloomberg piece reveals that “Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told SWR [a German broadcaster] that he expects state prosecutors and authorities to take action.”

Google and YouTube spokespeople have claimed that they will remove every inappropriate clip, but it remains to be seen if the companies can act quickly – and thoroughly – enough.  And even if Google is perfectly accommodating, new Nazi videos could be uploaded onto YouTube and complicate matters.  The German situation is, on the whole, somewhat reminiscent of a mess in Thailand that took months to resolve.

No timetables have been set for whatever sort of showdown may occur.  In the meantime, Google is probably less than happy about the publicity it’s receiving due to this matter.

Indeed, Thailand’s Information and Communications Technology Minister, Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, seems to have seen the light.  Although YouTube has, from very early on this dispute, tried to take down the offending clips, Komsan Tortermvasna reports that “Mr Sitthichai . . . will this week restore access to the immensely popular YouTube website.  He had learned the webmaster would block Thai viewers from seeing some improper content.”

Pookaiyaudom is also, to his credit, “seeking the revocation of a coup-makers’ announcement that empowers him to close websites at will,” according to the same article.  “He wants the process to be handled by a court instead.”

Granted, this arrangement will still leave a number of onlookers feeling unsatisfied – Google, YouTube, and censorship have had much too close a close relationship at times.  But Google is, while obeying local laws, still making an effort to avoid the practice.

“In response to this growing global debate, Google representatives are reportedly asking the US Trade Representative to treat censorship as a barrier to trade, presumably using sanctions or other pressure to move governments to cease demanding censorship of online communication,” notes Marshall Kirkpatrick.

In any event, it’s nice (and surprising) to see that things have finally been resolved between Thailand and YouTube; with any luck, this won’t start all over again after the ban is lifted.

Google Apologizes, Thailand Drops Lawsuit

The government had actually not yet filed the suit (which would have been filed in a Bangkok court), but it had enacted a ban on YouTube throughout Thailand.  As you can read in our previous coverage, the hubbub all goes back to a picture of the Thai king juxtaposed with the image of some feet.

Strangely, there was no indication that YouTube cared about Thai government’s reaction – this ban has been in place for over a month – until the news of a letter sent to Sitthichai Pokaiyaudom, Thailand’s Information and Communications Technology Minister, broke.

In the letter, Kent Walker, Vice President of Google, wrote that “he did not want Google to become a source of hostile feeling regarding the King’s video clips,” according to the Bangkok Post.  That is a fine sentiment, and yet backing down in this case will only reinforce the view of many that YouTube is not a strong defender of free speech.

Earthtimes.org, in fact, chose this occasion to pull out a rather damning statistic: “Increasing government censorship of websites was cited as one of the reasons Thailand was downgraded earlier this month to 127th place out of 195 countries on the Freedom House ranking of press freedom.”

It may be an instance of guilt by association for YouTube.

The flap relates to a clip that shows the feet of a woman above the head of Thailand’s King – this is insulting by Thai standards, and things escalated after several other videos compared King Bhumibol Adulyadej to a monkey.  YouTube stood firm, and did not take down the videos.

But now, in addition to the clips, the Thai government is upset over what it sees as unequal treatment.  “Google cited freedom of information as the reason for not exercising censorship here,” complained Thai Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, according to a TNA report, “but it earlier agreed to censor its website in China since China is a more powerful country.”

Hence the threat of a lawsuit.

The publicity may actually benefit the video-sharing site – it has gained a reputation for caving in to demands (as has its owner, Google).  As for the legal ramifications, YouTube’s lawyers are probably having a good laugh, but the suit is nonetheless going to mean more paperwork for them.

The Washington Post’s Emil Steiner had a good pointer for the Thai government, however.  “Perhaps instead of suing YouTube . . . Thailand might put those same resources toward eradicating the flesh trade within its own boarders.  For while spoofing the king may have insulted a great many people, isn’t the reputation of rampant sexual slavery and underage prostitution far more insulting?”

The page points to ict.cyberclean.org, and the English part reads:

Sorry! the web site you are accessing has been blocked by ministry of information and communication technology

According to Reuters on April 6th, the blocking was implemented due to “clips offensive to [Thailand’s] revered monarch,” and Google went into negotiations with the Thailand communications minister, who said “It will be a few days before we lift the ban on the entire site.” Apparently, not yet.

Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, argues that “In general, Internet censorship is on the rise globally.” Deibert says that over the past year, more than two dozen countries regularly blocked entire sites or specific content, whereas in 2002 only China, Iran and Saudi Arabia did so. Google/ YouTube were not available for comment.

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