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List of Countries that have Banned YouTube
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Tags: YouTube, ban, allow, illegal, against, video, website, internet, country, world
The YouTube banning trend is getting out of hand. Every week we hear of some country or other that has decided to protect its oversensitive citizens from the horrors of video sharing by initiating a block of the site. These are the countries that have banned YouTube in the past, and/or still don’t allow access to the service. Bear in mind that it’s hard to track actual availability of YouTube in some countries - not all ISPs comply with bans, and we count Youtube as “banned” where the largest ISP has initiated a block. We would love to hear your feedback; if your country is banning access to YouTube, add it to the list:
| | Iran and UAE - The UAE, as well as Iran, are blocking YouTube due to their standard censorship of “offensive material”. It is unlikely that their big fat firewall will open up for YouTube anytime soon. |
| | Morocco - Morocco has had YouTube banned because of videos that mock the Moroccan king as well as some pro-Western Sahara clips - until today. For the first time in two weeks, Moroccans can access YouTube again. |
| | Thailand - A similar on and off situation is found in Thailand, which blocks/bans/sues YouTube every time a new clip which mocks their king appears. Thailand has recently lifted the ban, but who knows when it may appear again. |
| | Turkey - Finally, a court in Istanbul has issued a short-lived order to block YouTube because of videos offending Ataturk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic. |
| | Iraq - Iraq has quite a weird situation: in Internet cafes you can access YouTube, but the US military forces residing there, due to an order from Pentagon, can’t. The ban, which blocks access not only to YouTube but also several other social networking sites, like MySpace, is still enforced, despite severe protests from YouTube. |
| | Brazil - Brazil, like Turkey, has had a nationwide YouTube ban due to a court order. The offending clip this time was Daniela Cicarelli’s sex stunt on the beach (how you can expect to have sex on the beach and not have it end up on YouTube is beyond us), and this Brazilian model insisted that the clip should either be fully removed (and users stopped from reposting it) or that YouTube should be banned altogether. YouTube was banned for a while, but the ban was removed relatively quickly. |
| | Victoria, Australia (in schools) - Australia is also included here (actually, only one of its states, Victoria) because YouTube was banned in schools there. It’s not really a full ban, but it’s not negligible either, considering some 1600 schools were affected. |
| | China and India - Finally, China and India currently have no active ban on YouTube, but both states have on occasions threatened to block the video sharing website; India because of a video clip mocking Gandhi, and China because of their general policy of banning, well, all kinds of stuff. |
Lister:
ListAfterList Wiki Contributors
Source:
Mashable
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