Comment by batuhanicoz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by batuhanicoz | Hacker News Reader

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> You have to back this claim. There were incidents where some blogs were blocked but that was because of a court order which was caused by an individual, not government.

Some parts of the claims can be backed. Just looking at the Internet connection of places which managed by the Ministry of Education can prove that the access WILL be limited.

For example, social networking sites (not just big players like Facebook and Twitter, small ones like FriendFeed as well), most of the blogs, YouTube (and many of its alternatives) CAN NOT be accessed in schools or any of the ministry buildings.

I know blocking social networks and sites like YouTube can be understood since they are distractions in school but the blogs which are blocked shows what they are trying to do. All blogs which has some kind of non-muslim information is blocked. Even my blog, a 17 year teenagers blog, is blocked in schools in Turkey. The reason for it, I believe, is the fact that I'm not Muslim and said so in an old video of mine, which is not removed.

Problem is those sites would be blocked because they are considered as distractions (and yes they are) not because they include evlutionary or non-mulim content. What is the site you are talking about? There should be a specific court order for that. I dont think anyone cares if a teenager is a muslim or not.

I'm not talking about blocking a website country-wide.

TTNET (biggest ISP in Turkey, founded and formerly owned by the government) gives you username for your DSL line, its usually something like phonenumber@ttnet (or yourname@ttnet1). If your username is like that, you connect with TTNET's DNS servers and your only limit is the sites that are blocked by courts.

But, if you're a school, they'll give you* a username like "schoolname@meb", when you connect with this there is a special black list (which includes word filters too) that can't be passed with anything but proxies. And, BTW, "proxy" is a blocked word.

For example, you can't -even- search for "porn" on Google. I'm not saying you'll need to search for porn on Google in school, just explaining how this black list works.

* A friend of mine explained it to me like this, he was a computer teacher in a government school. Now the system may be changed, I don't have clue, but the block is still there today.

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