Turkey has been criticised by cyber-rights activists after it blocked Google’s Blogger site.

Google’s Blogger site has been blacklisted by Turkey following a complaint from satellite broadcasters Digiturk over who has the rights to show live football in the country.

Digiturk successfully applied for an injunction to prevent third parties from showing football action meaning that online writing enthusiasts have seen access to the blogosphere denied.

The ruling comes after certain bloggers used parts of football games to illustrate their blogs and has brought condemnation by cyber rights activists who state that the response was heavy handed and would “inconvenience millions of people“.

In order to protect Digiturk’s copyright the courts in Turkey have shut the entire site down due to Turkey’s fairly stringent copyright laws. The law states that any sites or services can be completely shut down even if only one party is guilty of breaching copyright.

The ruling means that possibly as many as 600,000 bloggers who use Google’s tool will be prevented from being able to access their accounts. No figure has been released relating to how many of the bloggers wrote about football issues.

Digiturk defended their actions by saying that they were protecting their rights to show games from the Turkish Super Lig – the country’s top division.

Despite Digiturk imposing an injunction against Google’s Blogger, the satellite television firm state that there are still internet sites which stream football illegally.

Google issued a statement confirming that the Blogger ban was in force but expressed its disappointment that the site’s tools were not used to isolate the blogs accused of internet piracy.

It is not the first time that Turkey has taken a hard stance against websites. In October 2010 the country belatedly rescinded a two year YouTube ban.