Photos Inactivated

[Guest stef]

Some of you may notice that many of the photos have been deleted from the

site. We have been trying hard to get the site ban lifted. We spoke

recently to the people in charge and they said that if the inappropriate

photos were removed, that the ban would be lifted. Since this is something

that we want, we went though all the photos. Any photos that had butt

shots, cock shots, underwear, erections (even if in clothes) and other

questionable images were removed. We apologize for the inconvenience to

those of you that uploaded those images.

 

We also hope that this will help us get the ban lifted inside Thailand.

 

Wish us LUCK!

[Guest Hedda]

"We spoke recently to the people in charge and they said that if the inappropriate

photos were removed, that the ban would be lifted. "

 

I am impressed that you were actually able to find a body to talk to.

 

If you are at liberty to say, without prejudicing your efforts, I would be interested to know who and where these censors are.

 

If offending pictures considered pornographic are what they say they are after, I still can't figure out why they blocked Gaybutton's site.

 

Good luck.

[Guest JoeM]

It would be surprising if questionable photos drive the blocking of sites alone, but then using simple criteria even a non-English reader could screen sites for blocking. What's that phrase...Amazing Thailand.

[Guest Hedda]

Have you been able to determine how proficient these folks are in reading English ?

 

Just a thought, but if photos are the problem, wouldn't those semi-naked bodies on your masthead be the wrong message to send ?

[Gaybutton]

This is very interesting. I too would like to know who the censors are and how to contact them. If that's something you can't post publicly, how about sending me an E-mail with the details at gaybutton@gmail.com . I would like to know who did the talking, on both sides, and whether these people speak English.

 

I'm still not planning to reinstate my web site, although I would very much like to know why it was blocked. Some people tell me I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell, the blocked web sites are "farang" owned. I know there are many pornographic Thai web sites and they are not, and never were, blocked.

 

If you do not want to put the information even in an E-mail for some reason, maybe we can meet personally. We saw each other this afternoon, but you didn't say anything about this and I didn't read your post until after I went home. If I knew about this, I would have asked you about it when we were together today.

[Guest stef]

It is pretty much easy :

 

Every time I will try to access the site, I would get the Blocking page from

Ict.cyberclean.org

So I simply click on their link and went to their site. As the site is in

Thai, I went through all the pages and looked for an email address. I found

instead a phone number ( http://ict.cyberclean.org ). Wasn't sure who I was

going to call but I did call and got a nice woman who barely spoke English.

I told them I was the owner of Gaythailand.com and that I wanted to get

information about my site being blocked in Thailand. Not speaking a very

good English she tried to explain what was happening. She then transferred

me to the manager who spoke very good English. He told me that the site was

blocked because it had many nude pictures and that it was Against the Law in

Thailand.

 

He said that removing the nude pictures would remove the block. That I had

to call back when it was done. Unfortunately , this Saturday morning I

called them and it was closed. I guess they are closed on week end.

 

So I will call them back on Monday. I emailed them as well. I have removed

this morning over 200 photos that were sexual in many ways.

 

I guess having nude photos on your site, that is public to all out there,

will probably be negative here in Thailand. But I also believe, that the

site has to be reported somehow. They do have a link on their site, where

you can report a site that is inappropriate. So Someone did this I am 100 %

sure, They came to the site , checked it out and saw things that shouldn't

have been there at the first place and blocked it.

 

We did not get any warning at all. It just got blocked.

 

I can not tell how proficient those folks are in reading English but they

for sure don't need to read English to check the nude photos.

 

As you mentioned Hedda, I also thought about our main banner. I don't

believe semi-naked bodies is a problems as it is not in any ways shocking

people out there. I don't believe so. I guess we will find out next week.

But they only talked about the "Dick" and " Ass" photo. And believe me, the

guy even told me in his own English " Sorry not good English but it is Dick

Pics not good ". So I understood very fast. Then I asked for the rest of the

photos.

 

Now Gaybutton, I believe http://www.gaythailand.com and

http://www.gaybutton.com do have a different block.

 

When you try to access http://www.gaythailand.com, this is what you get as a

message :

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

ขออภัย

 

เว็บไซต์นี้เป็นเว็บไซต์ที่ไม่เหมาะสม

 

กระทรวงเทคโนโลยีสารสนเทศและการสื่อสาร

 

โดยได้รับความร่วมมือจากผู้ให้บริการอินเทอร์เน็ต

 

และบริษัท กสท โทรคมนาคม จำกัด (มหาชน)

 

จำเป็นต้องปิดกั้นเว็บไซต์นี้

 

หากมีข้อคิดเห็นอื่นใด หรือพบเว็บไซต์อื่นที่ไม่เหมาะสม

 

โปรดแจ้งผ่านดวงตาข้างบนหรือ

 

ict.cyberclean.org

 

( Sorry! the web site you are accessing has been blocked by ministry of

information and communication technology )

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When You try to access http://www.gaybutton.com and tried to access it at

the beginning of its blocked, this is what I was getting here in Thailand (

And I still get it):

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry, the web site you are accessing has been closed by Royal Thai Police

due to inappropriateness such as pornography, gambling or contain any

information which is deemed to violate national security.

For more information, please contact "Police Information System Center"

Bld#19 2nd Flr, Royal Thai Police, Rama I, Patumwan, Bangkok 10330 Tel.

0-2251-0164,

email : webmaster@police.go.th

 

http://www.police.go.th

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have snapshot of those blocks just in case you need to see..

 

It seems to me that you were blocked for something different.

 

So I am not sure what's the difference here or if there is any difference

between the two blocks. But you should look into it with the link they

provide. They might help you understand what's going on. Cause in fact you

did not have any nude photos on your site at all.

 

Now nothing has changed yet. I do hope for the best that following the Thai

Law would put us back on the net. We will do our best to keep the site off

sexual content.

 

Let's hope for the best......

 

[Guest mauRICE]

I guess having nude photos on your site, that is public to all out there,

will probably be negative here in Thailand.

 

Indeed. Half-baked attempts at nudity are an affront toThai morality. Full-blown sex shows and a brothel on almost every street corner are the way to go.

 

[Gaybutton]

What is even more curious is that my Internet service provider is TOT. I have not been blocked from this web site in weeks. I get right in, without having to use a proxy or anything else. Apparently the blocking is not compulsory and is up to the individual service provider. What provider do you use?

 

When the blocking first occurred, I checked with my Thai attorney and he assured me that this sort of censorship is illegal in Thailand.

 

The person you spoke to, Stef, told you "Sorry not good English but it is Dick Pics not good ." Considering the fact that my web site did not have any such pictures, and never did, I still have no idea why I was blocked.

[Guest mauRICE]

GB,

 

I hate to bring this up but have you considered that you might've been sabotaged? Your matchmaking service stirred up a lot of controversy and a colourful letter to the authorities might have led to you being shut down. I understand that you stopped your matchmaking service sometime before your site was blocked but you never know what some of these sadistic quacks with too much time on their hands are capable of.

[Gaybutton]

GB,

 

I hate to bring this up but have you considered that you might've been sabotaged? Your matchmaking service stirred up a lot of controversy and a colourfully-written letter to the authorities might have led to you being shut down. I understand that you stopped your matchmaking service sometime before your site was blocked but you never know what some of these sadistic quacks with too much time on their hands are capable of.

 

That is possible, but I ended the matchmaking service about a year-and-a-half before the blocking occurred. Also, none of the photos used were naked. Maybe that had something to do with it and maybe it didn't. All anyone can do is guess. Two things are certain . . . I never received any sort of complaint about it from any Thai person or organization at all. Also, my Thai attorney assured me that the service was totally legal and violated absolutely nothing.

 

Unfortunately, I do know what "some of these sadistic quacks with too much time on their hands are capable of." The most blatant example was the person who tried to intimidate and blackmail me into banning Hedda from posting on my web site message board. Maybe he had something to do with it since I refused to give in to a nut like that. Again, whether he had something to do with it or not is anybody's guess.

 

The only thing we know for sure is that this site, my web site, the Connect Guesthouse site in Phuket, and the Sawatdee forum were all blocked.

 

I have read postings that many other sites were also blocked. I have never seen any evidence of that. I have never seen any other web sites that were blocked other than those four. To this very day I am still waiting for someone to submit a URL for any other web site that is blocked. So far nobody has, and I have not been able to find any. Not one.

 

The common denominator, as I see it, is that these four web sites are all "farang" owned. I have seen no Thai-owned web sited that have been blocked.

[Guest mauRICE]

A Web site is blocked because it features nudity could very well be a pat but truthful excuse given by a government minion seeking to get rid of a bothersome caller. The top brass probably gave some sort of vague instruction to clean up the image of Thailand on cyber space. The clueless underlings then went on a haphazard rampage of blocking sites they summarily deemed offensive. I know because this sort of thing happens in my country too. Items that they don't comprehend, appear tiltillating ('gay', 'boys', 'money', 'farang') and of foreign origin, plus a few risque visuals here and there, will be the first to get the chop.

 

There are sites that are far more critical of Thailand, for eg, Thaivisa but these are too prosaic for the average Thai bureaucrat to wade through. Take our own Hedda's blog for instance. If I were interested in manipulating public opinion, Hedda's blog would be at the top of my hit list as it forces reasonable people to think outside their gleaming bubbles. But your typical Thai censor would fall asleep by the third verbal piroutte and historical metaphor. It is much more appealing and reassuring to the Thai psyche to target an obviously foreign-owned site containing visually incriminating markers: "Gay Thailand", "Gaybutton - Welcome to gay Thailand", etc. Could we have been more subtle? (Notice that the discussion board itself was not mentioned by the official that the moderator spoke to.)

 

My advice is to wait it out. Understand that you are a whipping boy in a time of great political uncertainty and what is happening to your Web sites is a typical knee-jerk reaction towards perceived dark forces. Your actions may be perfectly legal but the black letter law is rarely applied by the Thai court of public opinion when sitting in judgement of foreigners. Right now they need somebody to blame for their woes and declining morals - and you're it.

[Gaybutton]

All that you say, mauRICE, may be the reason. It may also have nothing to do with the reason.

 

Unfortunately, the bottom line is that it is still just a guess.

 

In my case, other than curiosity, it is a moot issue. I see no reason to change my decision not to reinstate my web site. For many years it was fun. I really enjoyed working with the web site and the people who benefitted from it. But for the past few years the fun began to deterioriate as more and more problems developed, mostly from people, as you rightly say, with too much time on their hands and also all the problems I was having with my web host company.

 

When it got to be a pain and a chore, rather than much fun anymore, the blocking was a blessing in disguise. If it had not been for that, I probably still would be running the web site and still going through more problems than satisfaction. Now that the site has been down for a few months, quite frankly I don't miss it.

 

It was flattering and gratifying to receive so much E-mail from people saddened to see the web site go offline. I still receive such E-mail periodically. Many people miss it and the information it provided. I have had many people tell me it was my web site that got them to come to Thailand in the first place. I do miss that aspect of it, but it just isn't worth it to me to deal with it any longer.

 

In all fairness, I will state that one of the nicest E-mails I received, shortly after announcing my intention to remove the web site permanently, came from Smiles. I didn't expect it and I was very pleasantly surprised by it. I appreciated his E-mail more than most because it demonstrated that while we may be bitterly at odds online, on a personal level our mutual regard is entirely different.

[Guest Hedda]

"I know because this sort of thing happens in my country too. Items that they don't comprehend...and of foreign origin...will be the first to get the chop. *** the black letter law is rarely applied by the Thai court of public opinion when sitting in judgement of foreigners. Right now they need somebody to blame for their woes and declining morals."

 

Well said, Maurice. It also accounts for what the War on Terror has become in most countries, especially America and its paramount leader, The Great Bushwhacker.

[Gaybutton]

To the person who sent a private message to me, I suggest using E-mail instead. I was not able to open your message. My E-mail address is gaybutton@gmail.com . I logged on to try later and now the message has disappeared entirely.