On 23 June, Viacom’s $1bn lawsuit against YouTube was thrown out by a US judge. The entertainment company had raised the claim citing widespread copyright infringement by the Google owned video hosting site. However, in his summary judgment, District Judge Louis Stanton held that Youtube was protected by the “safe provision” in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because they had swiftly removed all offending videos when prompted.
The Lahore High Court has ordered that several websites, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon and YouTube should be blocked by the government. The move came after the court found that the sites carried and promoted “blasphemous” material .
Earlier this year, Pakistan blocked Facebook in protest against the “Let’s Draw Mohammed Day” group that appeared on the social networking site.
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Turkey’s Internet censorship hit the news this week when the country’s own president raised his objections to the policy on Twitter. Yaman Akdeniz explains the state’s recent struggles with Google and YouTube
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In addition to blocking Youtube, Turkey has now blocked access to various Google functions. The High Council for Telecommunications has revealed that since June 2010, Turkish internet service providers have been instructed to block Youtube-linked IP addresses. On 4 June, Google investigated complaints that certain Google services, including Google Analytics and Google Docs, were restricted. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has estimated that 3700 websites are currently blocked in Turkey, including GeoCities, gay community sites and Kurdish sites.