“A court in Istanbul has issued an order denying access to the video-sharing website YouTube. The state owned Turk Telecom implemented the ban today after an escalating dispute between Greek and Turkish users of the site.”

The above is not fiction; it’s an excerpt from the Times Online. It turns out that international incidents can now be caused via user generated media. And things really got ugly when a user posted a video of a Greek Military march. “Greek commandos are shown singing a march with lyrics that include lines such as “We will break off the Turks’ heads and plant a cross in Hagia Sophia.”

Unfortunately it’s incidents such as this that fuels calls for censorship (or in Turkey’s case a complete ban) of user generated content. On one hand you worry is that such an amazing collaborative tool could, by a select few, be turned into a battle ground for ethnic, political and cultural disputes. Alternatively, why would a country take such a drastic step (a very china-esque move) when YouTube had already agreed to take the videos down?

One thing for sure, it’s a bizarre situation that quickly spiraled out of control. We can only hope that this doesn’t lead to overzealous censorship on YouTube and other media sharing sites.