HowTo Evade Turkey's YouTube Block

A 27B source inside Turkey reports that some proxies work for routing around the country's block on YouTube, which was instituted at the direction of a court after it found that a Greek video hosted on the site violated a law against ridiculing the country and its leaders.

"Apparently, only Turk Telekom has enacted the ban so far, which is a bit deceptive, since all other providers have to route through Turk Telekom to get out of the country...so it's an effective country-wide ban," the source said.

Things that seem to work now:

- Using Firefox, instead of IE or Safari (though oddly, the screenshot above is from Firefox)

- YouTube videos embedded in a web page or blog work fine

- A proxy, specifically http://youtubeproxy.org/ works well. Just visit that page and then find the video you want to watch.

- TOR - The Onion Router -- Commenter says it works, but is slow.

- The TORPARK browser

- OperaTor (after setting it to allow Javascript and plug-ins). It works, but it is slow.

- OpenDNS in combination with OperaTor. OperaTor with OpenDNS seemed to be more responsive than using TT's DNS. I did not try OpenDNS with Torpark.

Others proxies to try include:

http://www.proxymy.com
http://www.proxysmurf.com/
http://www.worksurfing.com/
http://unblockfacebook.com/
http://www.bypassfilter.net/
http://www.ibypass.org/
http://www.ipzap.com/
https://proxify.com/ https://proxify.us/ https://proxify.biz/
http://kproxy.com/index.jsp
http://www.attackcensorship.com/attack-censorship.html
http://mrnewguy.com/
http://www.unblockwebsites.com/
http://spysurfing.com/
https://www.the-cloak.com/anonymous-surfing-home.html
http://www.stupidcensorship.com/
http://www.evilsprouts.co.uk/defilter/
http://www.bypassbrowser.com/
http://www.proxymouse.com/
http://www.fsurf.com/
http://www.browseatwork.com/
http://www.surfonym.com/
http://www.iamnewguy.com/
http://www.ninjaproxy.com/

Find updated proxies here: http://myspaceblockedproxies.com/

Untested possibilities:

- Instead of typing YouTube.com into a browser window, type 208.65.153.253, to evade Turkey's DNS

- Evade DNS lookups for YouTube by installing the lookup on your local machine. Instructions from Slashdot reader AKAlmBatman are here.

- BoingBoing's longstanding guide to evading censorware

- Try switching your DNS to OpenDNS

Any inside-Turkey information would be appreciated. I'll update the list if information changes.

And some great background on the story from commenter viskisoda (nice handle):

As far as i know the thing which started all this was a Turkish video on youtube, claiming that homosexuality started in Greece 3000 years ago and greeks have been gay ever since.

In response to this, comes the Ataturk video which was childish and a bit over the line.

And then the Turkish newspapers dive in, turning this shitty video into a cyber war.

As far as i can tell there are two reasons for the newspapers to dive in:

1. They are to lazy to find real news.
2. They like the idea of Youtube getting out of the picture and their video sites sharing that heavy traffic.

And they have sucseeded of course.

I have been watching Turkish users behaivors on the net for a while and believe me when i say there are no better flooders on the net than us. We can gather hundrends of thousands of people within hours and flood the hell out of anysite with abuse.

Which we did to youtube as well.

And the funny part begins here:

The day after the incident, a DA in İstanbul reads the news, wants a copy of a video. It comes burned in a disc, he watches it, founds the youtube guilty and orders Turk Telekom to ban the site.

I think the next step will be banning Google, as it leads to a lot of anti turkish material when you use the right keywords.

All in all Turkish users cannot reach Youtube as a result of general stupidity mixed with a Greek kid with bad skills in Flash.

I won't really blame you, if you laugh...

UPDATE: Xeni at Boing Boing tries to figure out if Google/YouTube caved to Turkey demands to take down a video, and has a hilarious screenshot and comments on the ongoing Greece/Turkey flame war. 27B would like to reiterate that it finds the whole escapade hilariously stupid, and wishes only the best online pox for both sides in this nationalist inanity.