Reports (here, here) indicate that WordPress.com, in its entirety, has been blocked in Turkey. People trying to visit the website get the following message: "Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance." The founding developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, began writing about the situation last week on his personal blog, and he received a letter on Saturday night from a Turkish attorney representing Mr. Adnan Oktar, who apparently is a Turkish national and the author of books written under the pen name Harun Yahya. Mr. Oktar's attorney claims that another Turkish national, Edip Yuksel, started a number of WordPress blogs dedicated to defaming his client. The attorney says that he sent a number of letters complaining about the alleged defamatory statements to the WordPress legal department and apparently to Matt personally. According to the letter, he then brought the matter before a Turkish court, which granted Mr. Oktar's request to block access to WordPress.com in Turkey. The letter demands that WordPress "remove and prohibit any blogs in [its] site that contain my client's name Adnan Oktar or his pen name Harun Yahya or various combinations of these 4 names."

The Australian is reporting that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will likely rescind its requirement that Olympic athletes refrain from blogging during the Olympics:

The IOC Press Commission, chaired by Australian Kevan Gosper, is set to recommend that the IOC's powerful executive board drop its opposition to athletes writing blogs during the Games when it meets in November. Competing athletes are specifically prevented from working as journalists during the Games and have so far been strictly denied rights to continue writing internet columns during the event. But Olympic sources said yesterday that the IOC was set to make the shift as it realised it had to recognise the dramatic expansion of the internet in the daily lives of athletes. The IOC is also keen to expand the appeal of the Olympics to the youth market.

This seems like a complete no-brainer. Who better to provide first-person perspectives on the Olympics than the athletes themselves. The fact that they can't currently write about their experiences is lamentable, but not surprising given the IOC's strict control of everything related to the Olympics.

Of course the IOC's change, assuming it is approved, wouldn't just open the blogging floodgates. According to The Australian, the head of the IOC Press Commission said athletes "would have to comply with some strict conditions on their blogging, including not benefiting financially and not criticising coaches or other athletes."

Not criticising coaches or other athletes?! I guess that is free speech IOC style.

To follow up on Dan Gillmor's post earlier today, disturbing reports (here, here, and here) are emerging about the legal climate for bloggers in Malaysia. Yesterday, police detained Raja Petra Kamarudin, a prominent political commentator and blogger. They interrogated him for eight hours about articles he has posted recently and about user comments to his postings. Kamarudin is the editor of one of Malaysia's most popular political websites, Malaysia Today, which draws approximately 340,000 visitors a day, according to Chow Kum Hor of the Straits Times. The police summoned Kamarudin to Dang Wangi district police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, following a complaint by the ruling United Malays National Organization on Monday, claiming that Kamarudin had insulted the king and Islam on his website.

Upon his release from detention, Kamarudin wrote to his readers, emphasizing the government's interest in user comments and warning that "what you post in the comments section may get me sent to jail under the Sedition Act." According to Reporters Without Borders (RWB), Kamarudin faces a possible three-year prison sentence. Charles Ramendran of the Sun reports that Kamarudin's wife said that this is the second time her husband has been brought in for questioning over a posting on his website. The police questioned him last year over a posting about the sale of state titles, but did not formally charge him.

Hanako Tokita of Global Voices reports that the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is considering extending Japan's existing Broadcast Law to regulate bloggers and other website operators:

While nobody was watching, an interim report drafted by a study group under the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has set down guidelines for regulation of the Internet in Japan which, according to one blogger, would extend as far as personal blogs and homepages. In the report, this Study group on the legal system for communications and broadcasting, headed by Professor Emeritus at Hitotsubashi University Horibe Masao, discusses the possibility of applying the exising Broadcast Law [Ja] to the sphere of the Internet to regulate, under government enforcement, what gets on the web. The report also suggests that public comments be sought on the issue [Ja], in response to which the ministry has opened a space on their webpage for the public to submit comments [Ja], available in the period between June 20th and July 20th.

Despite the obvious significance of the proposed regulation, neither media nor the majority of bloggers are aware of its existence. The most detailed coverage of the issue has been provided by tokyodo-2005, a former journalist, now a lawyer and prolific blogger on media related issues, who has (at time of writing this) already posted seven entries on the topic. In these blog entries, he warns that this legislation would be applied not only to general websites but also to personal blogs and home pages. The report advises, he cites, that contents found illegal based on the significance of their activity ( would be outside the scope of protections on freedom of expression as specified in the Japanese Constitution; therefore, it is claimed, there would be no constitutional issue with regulating such content.

(Note: Global Voices, like the CMLP, is affiliated with the Berkman Center and Ethan Zuckerman, a founder of Global Voices, is on the board of advisors for the CMLP.)