“Internet Content Regulation Workshop”, which is organized to determine and propose solutions for internet content regulation problems in Turkey, has started at a winter-holiday center in Kartepe. The workshop has about 60 participants coming from public agencies, private sectors and NGO’s.
The participants of the workshop are representatives of ISP’s, GSM Companies, Online Publishers, Related Government agents coming from 5 different ministries (Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Ministry of Transportation, Prime Ministry) and Judges, Prosecutors, Advocates, Journalists and NGO representatives.
At the first day of the meeting, which is organised in a workshop format, 94 key points has been determined. Within the remaining two days, workshop groups will be formed in order to study these 94 key points with discussion sessions and propose solutions.
Although the meeting itself doesn’t have an enforcement role at all, the solutions provided from this workshop is expected to take effect in practice since many of the participants are coming from government offices who are defining the regulations. One of the participants, Advocate Gökhan Ahi, tells us his opinions on the workshop as:
Despite of these kind of workshops may not have a direct impact on the targeted subjects, they are really very important for leveraging the knowledge levels and creating an awareness among participants. We are already observing that the statist point of view rose in the 1st workshop has evolved into a more libertarian understanding that puts human nature into prominence. This fact underlines the importance of such workshops. And I think the conclusion report will also present a appropriate road map for law makers and the executers.
Erdem Dilbaz, another participant coming from Censor top Censorship (an NGO defending there shouldn’t be any censorship) states:
Internet has its self-control mechanism in its very core. But in Turkey, and also in all over the world, there are some agencies that want to take the control of Internet life. We want to put an end to applications that hinder the communication and information rights. We have decided to participate in this workshop with this manner. The common point of all the participants is the problem of “how to apply some enforcements without closing a site”. We do not wish the laws to direct the social changes. Our intent and effort is focused on rather making laws keep up the social changes renewing itself.
Fusun Sarp Nebil, one of the organisers of the workshop and the executive of turk.internet states:
“Internet content regulation” is a very important topic for both Turkey and the rest of the world. On one hand, there is the freedom issue and on the other hand there is the danger of breaching laws with some content. And ISP’s, law groups, NGO’s and etc. are residing just in the middle.
With this meeting we are trying to open the doors of the practices that reached reconciliation of differences by gathering all the related parties together. The high level of participation therefore means everyone is endeavouring for such a reconciliation. We observed a more controlling approach in the first workshop. But since the first workshop, we have seen a lot of positive development in practices. This shows us that these workshops are actually reaching the target and creating an awareness. We will closely follow the outcomes of this workshop and try to provide the appliance of the conclusion report.
We are grateful to Turk Telekom and DailyMotion, which are our financial suporters in this workshop, for their support and we would like to thank to all the participants, who attended the workshop physically or via Twitter. This workshop is a very important step for shaping the route of our national internet life.
Kaynak : 