BANGKOK, Thailand - The Thai government blocked access to YouTube on Wednesday after complaining that a short clip on the popular video-sharing site is insulting to the country's beloved monarch.
Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the country's minister of information and technology, said YouTube had turned down his request to remove the contentious 44-second video, which shows graffitti-like elements painted over a slideshow of photographs of 79-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
One part of the clip juxtaposes pictures of feet over the king's image -- a major taboo in a culture where feet are considered extremely dirty and offensive. The soundtrack is the Thai national anthem.
"We are disappointed that YouTube has been blocked in Thailand, and we are currently looking into the matter," Julie Supan, a spokeswoman for Google Inc.'s YouTube, said in an e-mail.
According to Sitthichai, thousands of people have called the government to complain about the YouTube video.
Sitthichai said Thailand's military-installed government also has blocked other sites deemed insulting to the king.
"People who create these (Web sites) are abusing their rights and clearly don't mean well for the country," Sitthichai said. "We have closed many and will continue to."
Thailand has no comprehensive law governing the Internet, and limits governing use and censorship are not clearly defined.
It's not entirely clear how the government was implementing the block. Domestic service providers are generally given lists of sites to block, but the control may be occurring at the government-owned gateways through which all Internet service providers are supposed to funnel data entering and leaving the country.
Blocking YouTube, of course, won't prevent someone from e-mailing the video or posting it on a Web site that is less popular and thus less noticed by the government.
But any hurdles, even if they aren't foolproof, are likely to accomplish the government's goals, said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University.
"A lot of the time, the viral spread happens because it's just one click away," Zittrain said. "If you make something not one click away anymore, you can slow it down a little bit."
Thai authorities take insults to the king extremely seriously. A Swiss man was sentenced to 10 years in jail last week in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai after he defaced posters of the king during a drinking binge.
Critics have accused the current government of blocking Web sites criticizing the September coup that overthrew then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
One of the blocked sites was launched by an anti-coup group calling itself Saturday Voice Against Dictators. The group has been holding protests demanding coup leaders transfer power to a democratically elected government.
Sitthichai said he had ordered fewer than 10 sites blocked since taking office late last year, either because the site was insulting to the monarchy, was pornographic or called for public political protests, which are illegal under martial law proclaimed after last year's coup.
However, at least a dozen Web sites with political content have been blocked, some temporarily, since the coup ousting Thaksin. After CNN interviewed Thaksin earlier this year, the link with the report was apparently blocked, though the action was not officially acknowledged.
In February 2006, the Web site of the Thai police department said that 32,612 "illicit" Web sites had been reported and subsequently blocked since April 2002. More recent statistics were not readily available.
