Turkey Has Blocked The Popular Online Encyclopedia Wikipedia

A reporter's laptop shows the Wikipedia blacked out opening page in Brussels January 18, 2012. REUTERS/Yves Herman

BBC: Turkish authorities block Wikipedia without giving reason

Turkey has blocked all access inside the country to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

Officials said "an administrative measure" had been taken, but gave no reason why.

Turkish media said authorities had asked Wikipedia to remove content by writers "supporting terror".

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

The Turkey Blocks monitoring group said Wikipedia was unreachable from 08:00 (05:00 GMT). People in Istanbul were unable to access any pages without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

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More News On Turkey Blocking Wikipedia

Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia -- Reuters
Access to Wikipedia blocked in Turkey -- ABC News/AP
Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia over 'terror' claims -- AFP
Turkey Shuts Wikipedia as Opposition Party Cries Censorship -- Bloomberg
Turkey blocks Wikipedia under law designed to protect national security -- The Guardian
Turkey blocks Wikipedia without court order or explanation -- Independent
Turkey blocks Wikipedia for 'not removing content' -- Al Jazeera
Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia, claiming 'smear campaign' -- The Hill
Turkey blocks Wikipedia, expanding censorship -- DW
‘What’s he hiding?’ Wikipedia reportedly blocked by Erdogan’s government in Turkey -- RT

The Wikipedia Wars

China and Japan's Wikipedia War -- Pete Hunt, Foreign Policy

How a showdown over a group of remote islands in the East China Sea is heating up online.

As China and Japan jockey for influence in the Pacific, an unlikely diplomatic fault line has emerged: an archipelago of uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea. Known as the Senkakus in Japan, which controls them, the islands are also claimed by China and Taiwan -- and both are struggling to reassert sovereignty. Tremors have increased in recent months with confrontations between the Japanese and Taiwanese coast guards and rabble-rousing from Chinese media outlets. Statesman have shuffled back and forth between Beijing, Tokyo, and Washington to cool the crisis, but neither Xi Jinping, the new head of the Chinese Communist Party, nor Shinzo Abe, Japan's new prime minister, show any sign of backing down. On the contrary, China raised the stakes on Jan. 30, when one of its military frigates aimed weapons-targeting radar at a Japanese warship, prompting Japan to lodge a formal complaint with the Chinese government.

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My Comment: This is one reason why Wikipedia should always be used as one of only many reference tools. But the fight and dispute between editors on Wikipedia .... and the web traffic that follows it .... provides a revealing insight on how important the web has become in the information and propaganda wars.

Why Does The FBI Want Wikipedia To Remove Their Seal?

FBI Seal on Wikipedia (Wikipedia)

FBI vs. Wikipedia: "FBI Has Not Authorized Use Of The FBI Seal On Wikipedia" -- CBS News

NEW YORK (CBS/CNET) The Federal Bureau of Investigation has sent a nasty letter to Wikipedia demanding that the FBI's official seal be removed from an article about the law enforcement agency due to authorization and counterfeiting issues.

"The FBI has not authorized use of the FBI seal on Wikipedia," said the letter to Wikipedia obtained by The New York Times. "The inclusion of a high quality graphic of the FBI seal on Wikipedia is particularly problematic, because it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting" copying and reprinting of the FBI's seal.

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More News On The FBI And Wikipedia

FBI wants its seal removed from Wikipedia -- CNET
Wikipedia Refuses FBI Order to Remove Seal From Site -- PC Mag
Wikipedia and FBI in logo use row -- BBC
FBI to Wikipedia: Remove Our Seal -- PC World
FBI to Wikipedia: Remove our seal -- CNN
Today in Crime Prevention: The F.B.I. Picks a Fight with Wikipedia -- Vanity Fair
F.B.I., Challenging Use of Seal, Gets Back a Primer on the Law -- New York Times

My Comment: This news story first broke out 2 weeks ago ... and since then nothing has changed. Hmmm .... I guess the government is now preparing take down notices from the following agencies to go out soon.

Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia

David Rohde of The New York Times in the Helmand region of Afghanistan in 2007. Tomas Munita for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban.

But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia.

Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times.

But Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world.

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My Comment: I am glad that he escaped, but no one can argue that a double standard is being at play here.