The İstanbul 10th Penal Court of Peace mistakenly banned access for one day to the Google-owned Blogspot blogging service on Tuesday due to an error in the written decision, according to an expert on Internet law.
Lawyer and academic Yaman Akdeniz said the İstanbul court received an application to block bilgeadam-magdurlari.blogspot.com and ordered a block on access to the website; however, in the written decision the court failed to include the website’s URL correctly, causing a block on all blogs with the blogspot.com extension.
“Even if the lawyer who made the application wrote the wrong address, the court or [the watchdog that implements the court order] should have noticed the mistake,” Akdeniz tweeted.
After the mistake was corrected, access to Blogspot.com was reinstated.
The bilgeadam-magdurlari.blogspot.com (victims of Bilge Adam) blog was swamped with complaints from consumers who bought services from a company called Bilge Adam, which requested that the court block it.
Blogspot is particularly popular with personal bloggers and commercial content publishers in Turkey. Users note that it provides an important source of revenue for some of the country’s top bloggers and independent authors, offering an open and monetizable platform for the exchange of ideas and commentary online.