Turkish Internet Optimism Law Upheld

Legal Issues

from the not-a-good-thing dept

About a month ago we had an article about a weird internet law in Turkey which said you could be jailed for being “pessimistic” online. It also said that all websites needed to be approved (via hard copy) by the Turkish government before they could go online. ISPs can also be fined for posting “lying news”. At the time we posted the article people hoped that the Turkish Supreme Court would overturn the law. Today we find out that the law has been upheld. Apparently, they don’t really want anyone to ever put up another piece of content from Turkey on the web. In the case of Mahir (of “I kiss you!” fame), that’s probably a good thing (though, I doubt you could accuse him of much pessimism). On the whole, though, I’d say this is a huge step backwards for the internet in Turkey.