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Turkey asks YouTube to remove videos accusing government of corruption, Google declines

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The Turkish government sent requests to YouTube for the removal of specific videos that it deemed critical of government officials, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google refused to comply with the request, saying that there was no legal basis for the removal of the videos.

The move by the government comes after a nationwide blackout of Twitter, which officials say is due to what they deem false allegations of corruption being circulated on the network. That block can be worked around by using Google’s DNS server to access the web, though it seems that won’t be necessary to keep accessing YouTube videos critical of the nation’s leadership—unless the entire website is blocked, that is.

Google slows web crawlers to help blackout websites during protest effort

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Google and many other websites went black today to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate, but now the globally popular search engine has taken the protest one step further.

Pierre Far, a Webmaster trends analyst at Google, announced on Google+ today that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company slowed its web crawlers to continue support against U.S. anti-piracy bills.

More information is available below.


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