You Tube blocked in Thailand

[paulk]

Source: Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand - The Thai government blocked access to YouTube on Wednesday after complaining that a short clip on the popular video-sharing site is insulting to the country's beloved monarch.

Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the country's minister of information and technology, said YouTube had turned down his request to remove the contentious 44-second video, which shows graffitti-like elements painted over a slideshow of photographs of 79-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

One part of the clip juxtaposes pictures of feet over the king's image - a major taboo in a culture where feet are considered extremely dirty and offensive. The soundtrack is the Thai national anthem.

"We are disappointed that YouTube has been blocked in Thailand, and we are currently looking into the matter," Julie Supan, a spokeswoman for Google Inc.'s YouTube, said in an e-mail.



Read more: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20070404/461322c0_3ca6_1552620070404-145142011

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While insulting the King is taken very seriously in Thailand, this is certainly disturbing - and shows something of a trend by the military junta that is now running Thailand. As the article also points out, several websites run by political opposition groups have also by shut down.

This is redolent of the sort of action taken by authoritarian regimes, and cannot be taken as a positive sign by anyone concerned with Thailand's future under the current leadership.

[wtmusic]

1. Either YouTube is dirty and offensive

or maybe they need to reexamine their attitude about feet. :scared:

[noel adamson]

2. Another American backed dictatorship...

...with rigid suppression of dissent.

[paulk]

5. not really

the junta was criticized by our govt.

if anything, the Thaksin govt that preceded the coup was favored by Bush.

the situation is not that clear cut

[Canuckistanian]

3. Hey, Thai surfers - Psiphon it!

http://psiphon.civisec.org/

An explanation here:
http://business.newsforge.com/business/07/01/09/1846256.shtml?tid=19

[superconnected]

4. I worked at microsoft until last august. There was a problem with ms spaces

because the chinese make microsoft hand over their usage records - or they can't be in china, and records that show who loaded or viewed porn leads to that persons imprisonment and often death.

Microsoft was going out of their way to make it so they couldn't keep records because of it but the chinese demanded the records be kept. Then microsocft started trying to block porn like crazy so people can't access it and get killed.

That's just china. A lot of the world is psycho about what they allow their citizens to see - Asia, The mideast, and even to a certian extent, America. Here people are inprisoned as pedophiles for simply viewing or downloading porn. They saw it, heck clearly a ped, and guilty of comitting a crime.

I know this article isn't about porn, it's just an example I'm using.