Internet censorship hit another hot Web startup this week.
"We found out yesterday the the Thai government has censored Justin.tv for anti-government content on the site," Justin.tv vice president of marketing Evan Solomon wrote in an email this morning. "The content was part of the Red Shirts movement, or National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship, and showed protests against the Thai government."
Solomon sent a screenshot of what he said is "a live channel broadcasting the Red Shirt protests."
The blog Thai Netizen contended that the Thai government had blocked Justin.tv from being accessible in Thailand by redirecting its traffic to a government website. Solomon provided a Google Analytics screenshot that appeared to back up the claim.
Here's more from Solomon's email:
On May 3, 2010 a Thai ISP called True Internet (http://trueinternet.co.th) asked Akamai to help them in censoring Justin.tv and redirecting it to a website of their choosing. Akamai was kind enough to forward us the email (screenshot: http://bit.ly/bBW3d3). The website they want all Justin.tv traffic redirected to is http://58.97.5.29/www.capothai.org. Using Google Translate (http://bit.ly/9yt4rc), it says, "Access to this information. Suspended temporarily by virtue. Emergency Decree on Public Administration. In emergency situations, BE 2548. The command center of the emergency situation." "The full text of the email from the screenshot above reads: From: SETTHAPONG DEJWICHIENKUMKOENG<setthapong_dej@trueinternet.co.th> My name is Setthapong from True Internet, due to our government policy, we have to block website www.justin.tv by redirect tohttp://58.97.5.29/www.capothai.org But when I tried to accesswww.justin.tv, I found it redirect to http://w3.mict.go.th. Could you please change redirect page to http://58.97.5.29/www.capothai.org?"
