The BBC are reporting today that the Turkish government has banned BlogSpot, Google’s blogging service, over a complaint made by satelite TV firm Digiturk.

The row has arisen over rights to broadcast football games – some bloggers were broadcasting the matches via their blog pages.  As a result, Blogger / BlogSpot has been blocked entirely to Turkish users.

This move comes only a few months after 2 year block of YouTube in the country, which has strict copyright laws which can allow for entire services to be shut down, rather than taking action against specific offenders individually.

A spokesman for BlogSpot said,

“The process for making a copyright claim for content uploaded to Blogger is straightforward and efficient, and we encourage all content owners to use it rather than seek a broad ban on access to the service”

It’s estimated that over 600,000 people in Turkey were using the service before the block.