Thailand Lifting YouTube Ban

Thailand’s government has agreed to lift a ban on YouTube within the country after Google agreed to censor the video service for Thai users who violate local “lese majeste” laws. Google had already agreed to help with the censorship effort after a video critical of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej appeared on YouTube. Two hundred other sites will also be turned on ahead of local parliamentary elections, according to the Bangkok Post.

Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post on the Splashcast blog tipped me to the story, and he has a player set up with a feed of all videos tagged with the king’s name currently on YouTube, where discussion of the controversy over the king is alive and well. Kirkpatrick asks in his post, “Is censorship a relic of a more unjust time in history – or is it a legitimate activity in some cultural contexts?”

For their part, YouTube and Google will continue working within the guidelines of national law and custom, according Chad Hurley in an interview with my colleague Liz Gannes regarding YouTube’s recent localization efforts. The parent company is simultaneously lobbying the U.S. government to pressure foreign governments to reduce censorship via trade agreements.

The United States has previously used trade agreements to call on governments to respect intellectual property, such as the WIPO Copyright Treaty. However, as China has demonstrated, signing onto the treaty doesn’t necessarily mean it will be enforced. And in Thailand’s case, trade agreement discussions with the US were derailed last year after the military coup, supported by the king, which put the current government in power.