Indirect route for YouTube to direct profit

The popular video-sharing Web site YouTube has been banned by courts over and over again in Turkey for long periods since 2007. Turkish users have been "legally unable" to reach the site since May 2008. But increasingly they are circumventing the ban, using proxy servers to watch videos they like, as the administrator of dozens of such servers confirms to Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

Even Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hinted at using proxy servers last November when replying to a question about the ongoing ban. "I use YouTube. You can, too," he told journalists.

Accessing YouTube has been banned in Turkey at various times on the grounds that various videos posted by users of the site insulted Atatürk, the founder of the republic.

Speaking to the Daily News, Gabriel Ramuglia, administrator of more than 200 proxy sites such as vtunnel.com and beatfiltering.com, said visits from Turkey to these sites "increased greatly from the moment of the ban on May 5."

"Hits increased quickly for a month after May and are now stable at around 1.2 million unique visitors per day, when you combine all my proxies," he said. "The largest proxies are ktunnel.com and vtunnel.com. Between those two would be the vast majority of my Turkish traffic. I average about three gigabytes per second of bandwidth usage to service the users of my site who visit YouTube from Turkey."

The details show Turkish people are increasingly learning how to use proxies Ğ servers that service the requests of users by forwarding requests to other servers, such as those used by YouTube. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client.

Skyrocketing usage
The proxy vtunnel.com received a total of 2.7 million visits in January last year and just under 20,000 of these were from Turkey, Ramuglia said. "In June, the first month the ban had been in full effect for an entire month, total visits stood at 11.2 million, 8.7 million of them were from Turkey." The figure represents a 435-fold increase in visitors from Turkey.

"It has basically been all-or-nothing," Ramuglia said. "Turkish traffic to other Web proxies that I run have seen similar levels of change."

The ban has created additional earnings for the site, he said, without giving specifics. "This has been possible despite massive bandwidth usage due to keeping an eye on cost cutting opportunities as well as working to maximize advertising revenue. Even though this traffic has a much lower profit margin than traffic from the United States, the incredible amount of daily visitors makes up for this, causing Turkish traffic to be a major source of the site's earnings since the ban came into effect."

As the ban lasts longer and longer, Ramuglia’s hands became freer. "In the beginning, it was not clear if allowing the massive levels of traffic would be a good business decision or not," he told the Daily News. "If the ban had lasted, for example, just a week, and I had ordered a large number of servers to handle the spike in traffic, I would have lost a large amount of money."

Ramuglia said he decided to "do his best to handle the traffic" after someone from Turkey emailed him asking for help in accessing YouTube.

"The ban has the effect of creating more interest," said Behçet Envarlı, president of the Turkish Informatics Foundation, or TBV.

"But one should not increase awareness of the Internet through bans." The foundation is actively trying to make sure the ban is lifted, as it is disproportionate, Envarlı said.

"A change has to be made, with moderation as the criteria," he told the Daily News. "The said crime [in YouTube, against Atatürk, the founder of the republic] was committed by one video, but then the whole site was banned, usurping the right of millions of people to reach YouTube." Envarlı said he believed "either the laws will be changed or they will be implemented with common sense."

The use of proxies to reach banned Web sites became popular due to "oppressive regimes such as China," said Kerem Özdemir, technology editor at Fortune Turkey. "Turkey was not among censoring countries until last year, but now it will be labeled as such in various reports. Meanwhile, the common man is using every means possible to circumvent the ban."

Commenting on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s use of YouTube, Özdemir jokingly said "maybe his children have taught him how to do it," or maybe "there is a special connection for the prime minister."