The government of Thailand Wednesday banned access to the popular video-sharing website YouTube and several other websites that contain material deemed offensive to the country's monarch. The YouTube ban resulted from a video depicting King Bhumibol Adulyadej as a clown with feet pasted over his head, an insulting image in Thai culture that can amount to a criminal offense. The video, less than a minute long, has had more than 16,000 viewers. Google, YouTube's owner, had refused to remove the video before Thailand blocked access to the website.

A similarly offensive video involving the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk prompted a Turkish court last month to order Turkish telecom providers to block access to YouTube. The court lifted the ban just two days later for unspecified reasons.