Turkey bans Google Blogger over pirated football feeds

Blogging site caught offside

A court has banned Google's Blogger service in Turkey over a row about pirated football feeds.

A local court outlawed the service in response to a complaint by satellite TV firm Digiturk that streaming media feeds from local games were appearing on multiple Blogger profiles.

An estimated 600,000 Turks use Google's service to chronicle their daily thoughts and post pictures. The vast majority of these users are doing nothing illicit or copyright infringing but have nonetheless found themselves locked out of the service following the blanket ban. Turkey previously banned the Google run YouTube service for two years up until October 2010 because of derogatory clips mocking the country's founder, Kemal Atatürk.

Google criticised the latest ban, arguing that that copyright holders should target individual infringing content via an established complaints procedure rather than seeking a blanket ban.

"The process for making a copyright claim for content uploaded to Blogger is straightforward and efficient, and we encourage all content owners to use it rather than seek a broad ban on access to the service," a Google spokesperson told the BBC.

"That way, people in Turkey can continue to enjoy Blogger whilst we respond to the specific complaint."

The ban seems to be inconveniencing regular bloggers rather than fans looking for unlicensed access to footage of Turkish football games on the net. Digiturk admitted that other sites outside Blogger were also providing access to pirated streams of football matches. ®