Google and lese majeste

Nicholas Farrelly - 26 Jan, 2010

Lése-majesté, or insulting the king, is a serious crime in Thailand. Hence Google’s agreement to block Thai users from viewing videos on YouTube (owned by Google) that mocked king Bhumibol Adulyadej, including one that showed him with feet on his head, a symbol of degradation to Thai Buddhists.

– Extracted from “Don’t be evil? Where Google still censors”, CTV News, 24 January 2010.

Back in 2007 this topic was discussed on New Mandala in some detail. These posts from the archive (here, here and here) make for interesting reading.

About the Author
Nicholas Farrelly
Dr Nicholas Farrelly is the co-founder of New Mandala. A graduate of the Australian National University and the University of Oxford, over the past 20 years he has undertaken research in Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, China and India. Nicholas is Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania and formerly the Associate Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, where he also led the ANU Myanmar Research Centre from 2015 to 2017.
New Mandala is supported by the Australian National University (ANU), a world-leading centre of research and teaching on Southeast Asia that has hosted the site since its founding in 2006. New Mandala's editors make editorial decisions independently of the ANU, and the views expressed at New Mandala are solely those of contributors and do not represent the institutional position(s) of the ANU or any of its constituent parts.
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