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Posted

Friday, March 9, 2007; from Boing Boing.

YouTube blocked in Thailand now?

UPDATE: Another BB source inside Thailand says YouTube is accessible now. I'm trying to confirm details, but three scenarios are possible: (1) this was a hoax (2) the government never blocked YouTube, and this was just an isolated issue with one user, or perhaps with one ISP (3) The government or various ISPs *did* block YouTube, but the site has since been made accessible. Censorship of TV broadcasts and other media in Thailand is not uncommon, and often haphazard when applied, so it could easily be any of the above.

----------------

BoingBoing reader Paul says,

I am a New Zealander living in Bangkok, Thailand. For the last 24 hours, no You Tube in Thailand! The site redirects to picture of the King at this government web site. I don't have UBC (Thai cable TV), just rely on internet for news/info on gummy bear chandeliers and stuff, and I can't find any other information about why this is so. I really need to get my fix of illegal(?) broadcasts of The Colbert report. Help.

Anonymous says,

It wasn't a hoax, a lot of my friends encountered the same block and redirection, BUT they can access youtube without the www, while www.youtube.com was blocked. This happened before with some hentai sites but they got around to that eventually, The best possibility is your #3, they are too dumb to realize the nature of youtube site, like how they misbanned geocities and angelfire before.

Mekongcola says,

Thailand has a long history of media censorship. Anything that conflicts with the official government statements, insults/degrades Buddhism, or is deemed as immoral (read naked people) is censored. Various examples here: Link.

Oscar Bartos says,

This doesn't address the Thai youtube ban specifically, but if Paul is looking for Colbert clips he won't find much since the Youtube Viacom crackdown. The next best thing is Comedy Central's youtube-esque video site: Link. Although I prefer the Colbert Report "channel" on ifilm with less intrusive advertising: Link.

redrus

Posted

A "technician" from TT&T called me earlier today, this is a rough transcript:

-Hi, I work TT.

-Excuse me, who are you?

-I TT.

-Oh, you are the one who are supposed to clear the thing up with the YouTube issue?

-Eh?

-You speak english?

-I TT.

-DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

-No. You have computer? I TT.

-Could you please tell your boss that someone who speaks english call me?

....

-Hello?

....

-You still there?

....

(someone hangs up)

And of course no one ever called back. Why do they even have "for enlgilsih please pless nine"?

Posted

I am able to reach http://208.65.153.251 and am able to view content (although I only tried one file). Pinging this IP address indicates long delays and some timeouts so I suspect there may be other issues involved.

Further I can reach http://www.youtube.com and http://youtube.com successfully and play content. (I playd two new and different files.)

I am in Bangkok on a CSLoxInfo ADSL line and am not using any proxy services (at the moment).

Posted

You may want to try the onion router ( http://tor.eff.org/ ) when this happens, use with FireFox and the TORBUTTON extension for FireFox. Made for addressing problems such as you are experiencing.

Have fun...

Posted

The strange thing is that I can watch videos on my Explorer but not when using Firefox :o Have cleaned cashe, and cookies but Firefox will not load videos?!

Posted
A "technician" from TT&T called me earlier today, this is a rough transcript:

-Hi, I work TT.

-Excuse me, who are you?

-I TT.

-Oh, you are the one who are supposed to clear the thing up with the YouTube issue?

-Eh?

-You speak english?

-I TT.

-DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

-No. You have computer? I TT.

-Could you please tell your boss that someone who speaks english call me?

....

-Hello?

....

-You still there?

....

(someone hangs up)

And of course no one ever called back. Why do they even have "for enlgilsih please pless nine"?

5555! I've had the same experience with them. It's very frustrating trying to explain the problem to them knowing full well that they will not (1) understand it until you explain it again for the tenth time (2) be able to address it straightaway or two days later (3) and both. I do feel sorry for them sometimes because their employer didn't provide them with proper training to do their job efficiently. It's hard enough having to give computer/technical instructions to the average person over the phone, let alone doing it in another language. That said, I still haven't lodged my problem with them yet. Maybe I will do it tomorrow. I'm determined to have a quiet, relaxing Sunday. :o

Posted
AIS have a help line where they tell you (in Thai!!) if you want English assistance press one.

Who is that message for?

Maybe for the English speaking Thai or the Thai speaking farang! :o

Posted
It sort of tells you that they couldn't care about any foriegn custom...

I think it's not that they dont care about foreign custom but it is the lack of knowledge of foreign custom. Most of the workforce needs a training in English and foreign customs.

Posted
It sort of tells you that they couldn't care about any foriegn custom...

I think it's not that they dont care about foreign custom but it is the lack of knowledge of foreign custom. Most of the workforce needs a training in English and foreign customs.

....and DNS, routing, proxy configuration, etc, etc.

Posted
Burmese diva causes You Tube banning in Thailand.

Irrawaddy Daily Mercury3/10/2007

The reasons behind the blocking in Thailand of popular website You Tube are slowly emerging.

MTV Thailand on Wednesday debuted the new music video by popular Burmese pop princess U Teub.

In her latest video the winsome Miss Teub can at times be seen wearing only a smile, rose petals and a dollop of whipped cream.

The video was reportedly seen by the daughter of a prominent IT Ministry official who complained to her father that the video presented young women in a disrespectful manner and should be banned lest it corrupt the young people of Thailand.

The IT Ministry official immediately rang his assistant to have all videos on U Teub banned.

The assistant contacted the heads of all local ISP's and demanded that access to U Teub videos be blocked.

Executives refusing to co-operate were told they would be transferred to TiTV.

Kyawk Kywin

This seems to be taken from some Hollywood B movie script, but totally plausable, in a country where rank, totally outweighs any institutional common sense of the censors.

Letting a daughter of some IT minister, "freelance" as Thailands

consciousness

Banana republic tactics...

Guest RealEstateBroker
Posted
I've been trying to get onto Youtube for the past 24 hours without success. Is anyone else having problems or is it only me?

I hope my landlord hasn't blocked the site due me using loads of bandwidth to view it... :o

Is youtube.com back up again ? I'm really don't care about youtube as much as I care about the

big picture regarding blocking.

I'm in the states for a couple of days and curious.

THANKS

Posted (edited)
I've been trying to get onto Youtube for the past 24 hours without success. Is anyone else having problems or is it only me?

I hope my landlord hasn't blocked the site due me using loads of bandwidth to view it... :o

Is youtube.com back up again ? I'm really don't care about youtube as much as I care about the

big picture regarding blocking.

I'm in the states for a couple of days and curious.

THANKS

Youtube main page comes up fine now. Bangkok, True ADSL, OpenDNS

Regards

/edit connexion //

Edited by A_Traveller
Guest RealEstateBroker
Posted

Thank you very much A_Traveller for taking the time to answer.

What is your take on this situation, I have lived in Thailand a long long time and I gotta

say this is getting more and more "interesting".

THANK YOU

Posted
Thank you very much A_Traveller for taking the time to answer.

What is your take on this situation, I have lived in Thailand a long long time and I gotta

say this is getting more and more "interesting".

THANK YOU

As in the Chinese proverb I guess...

The position re censorship IMHO is that the junta has a very thin skin and is especially uncomfortable with 'new media' etc. Their inability to work with media of all forms is very notable. Thaksin, having warned the editors about being 'un-patriotic' and the advertising departments about possible loss of revenue for being viewed as 'unfriendly' had, at least in the first term a more compliant environment. It also allowed for effective news management, which after all TRT had advised on by foreign specialists about this technique.

As to the reason, I've had several different versions none of which are conclusive. Have to say discussion is not helped by a fake 'news' item in the thread here though.

Regards

Guest RealEstateBroker
Posted

Again thank you. I have a feeling this could be a long interesting topic.

I have always thought how a country allows internet access directly relates to the freedom of

the country. Yes, kind of basic.

Thanks again, I will PM you.

Posted

Yey! YouTube is finally working for me! I called TT&T today and as expected, I got nowhere with them. They stressed me out to the max! No clue, no care, so I gave up! Instead, I asked one of the IT personnel from the hotel next door to come out and help me. He fixed the problem in 15 minutes! If any of you out there are still having the same problem that I had (ie, videos getting stuck at 'Loading...'), try going to INTERNET OPTIONS, GENERAL, TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES AND DELETE COOKIES. YouTube is working for me now, I'm happy and this will be my last post on the subject.

Posted
MTV Thailand on Wednesday debuted the new music video by popular Burmese pop princess U Teub.

Can’t find anything on YouTube when searching for “U Teub”. Who’s got a link?

--

Maestro

"U TEUB" = YOUTUBE. Spoof article.

Posted
I am able to reach http://208.65.153.251 and am able to view content (although I only tried one file). Pinging this IP address indicates long delays and some timeouts so I suspect there may be other issues involved.

Further I can reach http://www.youtube.com and http://youtube.com successfully and play content. (I playd two new and different files.)

I am in Bangkok on a CSLoxInfo ADSL line and am not using any proxy services (at the moment).

I am still able to access You Tube and view content using both Firefox and IE. Honestly not sure what all the fuss is about censorship?

Having said that there is a ton of controversial, inappropriate and negative content re: Thailand on You Tube. Many videos cover topics which are censored or forbidden here on Thaivisa.

Posted
Having said that there is a ton of controversial, inappropriate and negative content re: Thailand on You Tube. Many videos cover topics which are censored or forbidden here on Thaivisa.

So what. The parts of the internet should be free. I appreciate TV has to have some censorship to operate though.

I ve had no probs with YouTube.

i am on TTandT in Phuket and am using Firefox

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted
I've been trying to get onto Youtube for the past 24 hours without success. Is anyone else having problems or is it only me?

I hope my landlord hasn't blocked the site due me using loads of bandwidth to view it... :o

The govt has blocked it. CENSORSHIP, people! Another reason to leave Thailand. After many years, I am done. June I will leave. I hope to return one day if they get their act together. How does business even function here (as they scratch theri heads and wonder whey they lag behind the world?)

cheers. bye.

Posted (edited)
I've been trying to get onto Youtube for the past 24 hours without success. Is anyone else having problems or is it only me?

I hope my landlord hasn't blocked the site due me using loads of bandwidth to view it... :o

The govt has blocked it. CENSORSHIP, people! Another reason to leave Thailand. After many years, I am done. June I will leave. I hope to return one day if they get their act together. How does business even function here (as they scratch theri heads and wonder whey they lag behind the world?)

cheers. bye.

Many years huh? Your credibility is a little shaky... only last month you posted that you'd been here only 9 months.

Now what would you have us believe?

/Edit - As there is more than one thread running on this subject, I'll close this one now.

The discussions continue in this topic.

/Closed.

Edited by Jai Dee
Additional comment added.
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