High number of UAE websites 'inaccessible' - project

Posted by: Nrome Saturday, 13 June 2009 11:52 AM[UAE] - United Arab Emirates

Please, the herdictweb report is NOT a report on internet censorship and should not be taken as such, this is dangerously misleading producing such comments as "Isn't it amazing those countries that dictate democracy are those who place restrictions where none should be applied" (BTW dictate democracy is a contradiction in terms). It merely reports on inaccessible web sites, a wholly different matter. I will give you a breakdown on the first websites mentioned as "inaccessible" on the the herdict website, please note there is no mention of "blocked" or "censored" as the article here has suggested. sendspace.com - a site providing a service to send large files. I have no problem reaching this site, this site is blocked by only one out of four ISP's. Hardly surprising for a service that that might chew up ISP bandwidth. This is commercial blocking, not UK government censorship. ziare.org - this is a badly configured, or non-operational website that merely produces the error: "You don't have permission to access /ziareorg.php3 on this server." This is neither censorship, nor an indication of an ISP trying to block a site due to bandwidth concerns. wattaninet.net - a broken, or no longer existant DNS record. Both nameserver records for this domain refuse to respond to nameserver queries. Again, this is neither censorship, nor an indication of an ISP trying to block a site due to bandwidth concerns. www.anonymous.com.bh - this is my favourite so far! This is Bahrain government censorship by proxy, ALL ACROSS THE WORLD, as the government of Bahrain doles out all .bh domains and has complete control over whether they remain active, and where the nameserver, and therefore host addresses point to. In this case, that would appear to be the standard block message of the government of Bahrain, in particular, Batelco, the government controlled Telco. Any request to unblock this address points to - http://www.unblock.gov.bh/

Posted by: Aziza Saturday, 13 June 2009 11:37 AM[UAE] - UAE

Saad, LIFE itself has no control or rating. In the end it is up to the individual to exercise discretion both in their life and on the internet. Yes there's every sort of bad thing on the net and there's every sort of bad thing in real life. As parents it is our responsibility to guide our children to make the right decisions.

Posted by: Saad Saturday, 13 June 2009 10:40 AM[UAE]

This is realy a good step since the internet has no control nor rating to be classified . I wounder how those who calls to open the internet if they will let their children watch these movies or pictures. or use dating services.

Posted by: Carmi Saturday, 13 June 2009 9:23 AM[UAE] - UAE

Isn't it amazing those countries that dictate democracy are those who place restrictions where none should be applied. Internet censorship is a powerful weapon when governments use this tool to withhold information that should be accesible to each and everyone of us for the good of mankind. Technology today is being used by the powerful and elite to manipulate and control almost 2/3 of the world's population without us even realizing it's being done. Remember information and knowledge is a very powerful tool and there are those who would prefer it remains in the hands of a very few.

Posted by: Sherrie Saturday, 13 June 2009 9:13 AM[UAE] - UAE

The numbers provided by the herdict.com site are based on individuals reporting blocked sites. Is this herdict.com site also blocked by the UAE? If so, people there would not be able to report blocked sites as easily as those in the US where this site is not blocked.