THAILAND AND YouTube: A RECAP

I hadn't really been following the most recent (since April 3) blocking of YouTube by the government of Thailand but I found the following excellent recap on Global Voices Online:

Friday, May 18th, 2007 @ 13:04 UTC
YouTube vs. Thailand: The Latest Round
by Preetham Rai

YouTube’s latest round of trouble with Thailand started in April when some YouTube user uploaded a video mocking the Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej.  The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) tried to get YouTube to take down the clips.  YouTube and its parent company Google ignored the call.  MICT decided to block out YouTube.  The ban fueled more copycat videos to appear on YouTube.

The king is highly revered in Thailand, not just because of his status but also due to his involvement in development projects.  People openly show their respect and affection for the king.  Thai blogger Mr. Pavee explains:

If any of the video uploaders have been out here in Thailand (though I strongly doubt they have), they’d notice how the king is loved by everybody here.  Many shops hang his photos up on the walls and yellow flags (yellow represents the monarchy here) can be seen hung from many houses.  The nation is filled with people wearing yellow shirts showing respect to the king.  If a photo of the king’s face graffiti’ed on was hung up on the streets, someone will go and tear it down within a few seconds, let alone minutes.  Once last year, hundreds of thousands of people wearing yellow shirts gathered to listen to his speech, the crowd was literally a kilometer long.  That’s how much people love him here.

The king was born on a Monday.  Many people wear yellow on Mondays to honor the king.

Long time Thailand resident Andrew Biggs feels that blocking YouTube only helped encourage the miscreants.

I don’t care how offensive the video clip in question is.  The truth is, the power of the love and devotion the Thais feel towards their King is so strong, it can never be hurt or destroyed by one stupid video clip.   But the government has banned You Tube, and in doing so, they have drawn the attention of the whole world to this situation.  Now every obnoxious person in the world who has access to the internet (and believe me, that’s a LOT of people) is now busily making his/her own anti-King videos.

Early in May, MICT decided to sue Google under Thailand’s lèse majesté law.  Thai blogger drewkam called the legal action an “absurd” move.  Drewkam reiterated the affection that the Thai people have for the king but felt the action would only end up bringing more negative publicity to Thailand.  The blogger urged the MICT to get on with

other things much more important (like making my DSL connection faster!).

On May 11th, Google backed down and agreed to take down the clips.

Lost Boy wrote

It looks like Thailand won’t be suing Google after all.  “We have called that off,” said Sitthichai.  Google VP Kent Walker apologized to Thailand in an official letter.  All defamatory clips of HMtK will be removed and soon we will all be able to watch videos of cats falling off TVs again.  Will it be happily ever after?  Perhaps, although I’m surprised that Google buckled to Sitthichai’s bullying tactics.

Sitthichai Pokai-udom is Thailand’s minister for Information and Communications Technology.  A week has passed since that news and YouTube is still inaccessible.

Wonder what is taking the MICT so long?

A comment by Hew on New Mandala might offer some clues.

In the report I read, Google had said that half the clips had already been removed by their original posters.  Of the remainder, several would be removed as offensive to HMK.  The remainder on the government’s ‘offensive’ list were judged by google to be political criticisms of the government and nothing to do with lèse majesté.  These would not be removed.

That's it in a nutshell.  I certainly hope that the two sides can come to some sort of resolution in the near future...

MORE ON THAI BLOCK OF YouTube

From Wednesday's Bangkok Post (following up my post of March 11):

Wednesday March 14, 2007

CENSORSHIP
Thai users blocked from YouTube site

DON SAMBANDARAKSA

Authorities in Thailand temporarily blocked video sharing service YouTube on Friday and Saturday, though it remains unclear who did the blocking and why.

On Friday people trying to watch videos at http://www.youtube.com were instead greeted with an error page.  By Saturday morning, rather than the error page, the site was redirected to http://www.mict.go.th, the ICT Ministry's web site.  However, the block was removed around noon on Saturday.

ICT Ministry spokesperson Dr Vissanu Meeyoo was contacted by phone and denied any knowledge of a block.  He said that in any case, it was unlikely the MICT was involved as everyone there was simply too busy with the telecommunications law seminar on Friday to arrange or authorise the alleged block.

A thread on the popular geek site blognone.com did some analysis of the block early on Saturday morning.  It showed that the DNS (Domain Name Server) was still pointing to the correct address, but rather than data from YouTube, the "server" had returned HTTP error number 301, a permanent redirect, sending the browser to the MICT web site.  This would indicate that the sessions were being hijacked.

The HTTP response said that the server was running Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) with the modhwforward10 module.  Such a module does not officially exist.  This peculiar fingerprint has been seen in the past when web sites critical of the government are blocked and suddenly go offline.

YouTube allows any user to upload their videos to the site to be shared and viewed over the Internet.  Many popular videos are viewed by millions of users around the world.  YouTube had not responded to emails by the time we went to press.

CENSORSHIP, THAI-STYLE

Yesterday, I repeatedly tried to login to my YouTube account in order to upload some video footage I shot of Alex dancing along to a Marillion song ("Accidental Man" from the new Bootleg Butlins DVD).  However, I kept getting re-directed to the Thai Ministry Of Information and Communication Technology site and couldn't figure out why.  When I asked my wife she told me it said that I was trying to access a website that "was bad for Thailand."  I realized the last time I'd encountered the MICT re-direct was last year when I tried to access the Yale University Press page for The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej by Paul M. Handley (back then, the censorship page was a stylized eye — I much prefer the picture of their Royal Highnesses the King and Queen).

At least I wasn't the only person the Thai government was censoring from the "evils" of YouTube this weekend (I certainly haven't uploaded any naughty or politically-incorrect videos).  2Bangkok reported on the blocking and mentioned that in the past if controversy about a site censorship becomes too great the Ministry removes the block and denies it ever restricted access.  Both the BoingBoing directory and Global Voices Online discussed it and the latter speculated the censorship could be due to the recent interviews former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra gave to CNN which were banned in Thailand but available on YouTube.

VIDEO CLIPS AND YouTube

I don't really shoot a lot of video footage anymore, at least not with my camcorder.  If I do shoot any video, it's usually of the 10-second- to a minute-long clip variety filmed with the video function of my digital camera.  The results are usually less than spectacular but they offer interesting glimpses into my day-to-day life, something more than a mere still snapshot can offer.  Although I do share them with my wife and, occasionally, with friends the clips just sit on my hard drive waiting for me to do something with them.  The resolution isn't the greatest (it's a 7.2 megapixel camera but the video is something less than that) so making a DVD of the clips isn't the best option.

Enter YouTube.  I discovered this video-sharing site just about a month ago (yeah, I know, I'm somewhat behind the times on this one!).  I've decided to use YouTube to embed a few videos on this blog from time to time.  Again, I stress the quality isn't the greatest (I don't shoot these to win any awards) but they might offer a bit more insight into things we see and do in Thailand.  I hope so, anyway.

This first clip is some footage of traditional Thai dancing, shot at the Phuket Carnival on Patong's Beach Road, November 3rd.  (Make sure you have a fast Internet connection before trying to view...)