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Turkey Bans Periscope (stockholmcf.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.

stikves writes: According to online reports, a recent court order has banned Periscope across Turkey. The cited reason is the alleged violation of copyrights of a local company named "Periskop." This adds to the list of online services no longer available in Turkey, including Wikipedia, PayPal and WordPress, among others. While access from Turkey to the domain periscope.tv and to the Twitter account "periscopeco" is banned, users can still access Periscope services under the name Scope TR and Twitter account "scopetr." Lawyers from Twitter, Apple and Google requested rejection of the case, "saying it was impossible for a company like Twitter, operating in the U.S., to be aware of the existence of the same brand name in Turkey," reports Stockholm Center for Freedom.

26 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. That is terrible! by 110010001000 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    What is Periscope? I am guessing it is a type of food or drink. Anyhow, I am outraged about it.

    1. Re: That is terrible! by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      I see. I use Grindr myself. Can't they switch to that?

    2. Re: That is terrible! by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Can't you switch to that??

    3. Re:That is terrible! by jrumney · · Score: 2

      The Turkish trademark is for the rather broad category of "services", so food or drink would probably get past it. There are 88 US trademarks for "Periscope", so whoever it was wasn't very good at choosing unique names to be recognized by.

    4. Re:That is terrible! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, much better ask Slashdot.

    5. Re:That is terrible! by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Is there an app for that?

    6. Re:That is terrible! by Angeret · · Score: 1

      Ironically, this is a fine thing to have and be able to do unless you live in the country which has just banned Periscope. Wikipedia was banned April 2017. Sucks to live under a dictator.

    7. Re:That is terrible! by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Not sure why (1) you've been swarmed with troll answers or (2) you've been modded down, but it's early in the day and I haven't had enough sleep so I'm probably missing the obvious. But given this is a common question:

      Periscope is a live streaming app. You're supposed to use it to broadcast something you're videoing via your phone. So, as one example, there was a recent sit in in Congress to protest the lack of progress on gun control, and the House Speaker cut the C-SPAN feed. So members engaged in the sit-in tweeted links to their Periscope feed, and everyone was able to see the sit in via the live feed instead.

      That also probably answers the question "Is there a more convincing reason other than 'It violated trademark law, which I'll confuse with copyright law because TEH MPRIAAPHIAA HATES MY FREEDOMS" for explaining why it's been banned (not merely asked to rename itself, but actually banned.) It's very good for broadcasting things the government doesn't want you to see, when that government is powerful enough to control the regular media.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    8. Re:That is terrible! by thoughtlover · · Score: 1

      Yup. mod parent up. Turkey, a country with a questionable human-rights record (and desperately wants to get into the EU) is calling this a copyright/trademark issue?? LOL!!! I gotta admit, they are trying to be creative in their ongoing subjugation. The two parts of the article basically sum up.

      "A Turkish court on Tuesday banned all services of Periscope, a live video broadcasting platform...

      "Turkey has temporarily blocked social media sites including Facebook and Twitter in the past, usually following protests or terrorist attacks."

      --
      No sig for you! Come back one year!
  2. Wish I cared ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I really wish I could muster up some sympathy for how an ever-increasingly thuggish and authoritarian asshole like Erdogan is doing even more thuggish and authoritarian shit.

    But, I can't.

    What we need to do is stop coddling his ego that he's a member of the Western democracies, and let him get on with building his theocracy and fuck the hell off.

    It'll be just another source of angry Muslims in the world, nobody will even notice.

  3. Erdogan... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Erdogan, another regressive disgusting piece of trash that has been freely, wllingly and knowingly democratically elected by the mindless, populist and guillible masses that more and more, in this sort of mini dark ages we're living through, force their collective stupidity on the thinking minority.

    1. Re:Erdogan... by dmesg0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Erdogan = Khomeini
      Turkey is slowly becoming Iran while Atatürk is rolling in his grave

    2. Re:Erdogan... by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 1

      Erdogan = Khomeini
      Turkey is slowly becoming Iran while Atatürk is rolling in his grave

      That's what it looked like.

      I've heard Kemalist Turkey's political system described as "Democracy ... except Turkey will never be an Islamist state. Elect an Islamist, the moment he tries to implement Islamist policies, there will be a military coup, the army will shoot as many Islamists as seems necessary, and then surprisingly soon, hold new elections. Vote better next time."

      Alas, Erdogan carefully purged the Kemalists from the army before making Turkey an Islamist state, and by the time the army caught on ... it was too late.

  4. Not a Coincidence. by Zorro · · Score: 1

    I lived in Turkey for two years.

    This was planned by the government.

  5. Purpose Please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So you are saying, on Slashdot, that if an older man were to become a Mormon you have access to lots of young hot females.

    Is this some kind of Slashvertisement?

  6. In related news... by sconeu · · Score: 1

    Turkey has also banned its submarines.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    1. Re:In related news... by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 1

      Good. They can't see where their going anyway.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  7. That's a bit rough by rossdee · · Score: 4, Funny

    for submarines wanting to transit between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean

    1. Re:That's a bit rough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What Moscow can do for their brave sailors of the Black Sea fleet!? First they almost get contained in another country and then they are banned using periscopes.

  8. Oh THAT Periscope by rbpOne · · Score: 2

    I laugh/snorted when i read the headline, thinking Turkey was trying to ban actual periscopes.

  9. Down Periscope! by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Prepare for silent running...

  10. Re:Trademark, not copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The stated reason does not have to make sense. Turkey is no longer a democracy, Erdogan has locked thousands in jail to silence opposition and is following classic authoritarian techniques to secure his control over everything.

  11. Not impossible by jrumney · · Score: 1

    Twitter, Apple and Google are just lazy and want to be able to do treat trademark law the same way they are already treating tax law. WIPO has an online search where you can easily search for trademark conflicts worldwide. It's a few minutes work to punch in some spelling variants and check that any conflicts that come up are not in similar industries.

  12. Re:And by angsthaas+anonymous · · Score: 2

    Except another piece of freedom in Turkey off course.

  13. Acrofatic by tepples · · Score: 1

    So what if a net filtering tool developer looks like Poppin Fresh? You must not have paid attention to the energy with which Poppin moves around in some of the Pillsbury commercials.

    Land that jump dude
    Show me your moves
    I can dig up more.

    There are plenty of other "acrofatic" characters, and you might be able to catch one of them on someone's P***scope stream.

  14. Indirectly, this is actually good news! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    L:ike everyone else in here I had no clue what Periscope is, so I clicked the link. It's actually Slashdotted!

    Old-timers will remember that when Slashdot was at the peak of its popularity and people read the articles before commenting, any linked article would be effectively DDoSed by being accessed by the vast herd of users.