16 September, 2005

Censorship

Gulf News recently wrote an article about a report claiming that "the UAE's policy of blocking offensive websites is strongly supported by the country's residents." The footnotes of the report in question said that "60% of [Etisalat's] 14,000 domestic subscribers [responding to questions in a poll] favored retaining filtering." The source for that statement was the Ministry of Information. One of the ministry's other jobs, coincidentally, is to block access to websites it considers "inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates."

An unscientific poll of 30 people I once conducted here suggested a distinct lack of support for censorship, a finding that has been consistent with anecdotal evidence I have come across. However, I would like to see the opinions of a slightly broader spectrum of Internet users in the country before I judge the truth of the statement on support for censorship.

With that in mind, I would be grateful if you, the bloggers of the UAE, could write about your views on the following:
1) How often, if ever, have you had trouble accessing material you would consider legitimate to view?
2) Do you support the current degree of censorship of the Internet? That is, do you feel it is just about right? Do you think it should be stricter? Less strict? Should it be done away with altogether?
3) What would you think of a system in which individual users got to choose whether they wanted their access to the net censored, as opposed to the current one where everyone's access to certain sites is blocked?

I'd also like to remind all of you to keep any discussion civil, and to remember and respect the boundaries of the UAE.
Posted by Catamaran Cameraman at 9:32 pm

5 comments:

secretdubai said...

1) How often, if ever, have you had trouble accessing material you would consider legitimate to view?
Fairly frequently. The main problems are the pan-blocking of photo subdomains (blogger, snopes), translation sites, games sites (flash games, not gambling) and web archive sites.

2) Do you support the current degree of censorship of the Internet?
At the very least, it needs to be far less strict. They need to limit the censorship solely to offensive sites, not sites that might be used in some way to access blocked offensive material. Eg translation sites, archive sites, P2P downloading sites, and so forth. In a multilingual region, the vast majority of useage of Babelfish's site translator is going to be innocent traffic. There is no need to block it, it transcends their remit. Ditto the wayback machine.

3) What would you think of a system in which individual users got to choose whether they wanted their access to the net censored, as opposed to the current one where everyone's access to certain sites is blocked?
Yes. I think it should be on by default, opt-out by application. People could sign a form disclaiming Etisalat from any responsibility of the content they accessed - so they couldn't get angry with Etisalat if they turned the censorship off and then were offended by a porn site, for example.

Censorship apart, the main reason they need to drop the proxy is speed. Due to experiments I have carried out, I can report that http browsing on my current internet access of 1mbps is no better in performance than a 64kbps line.

Downloading files etc is much faster, but it is increasingly clear that every single element of a web page - every image it contains - is being checked by the proxy, with today's complicated, media-rich web pages, no wonder it is so fking slow.

16 September, 2005 22:28
Tim Newman said...

1) How often, if ever, have you had trouble accessing material you would consider legitimate to view?

All the time. Personal website hosts like www.myspace.com are blocked, along with dozens of innocent photo hosting sites (Blogger photos being one, IIRC). The most ludicrous site to be blocked is www.cowboylyrics.com, a website which contains the lyrics to old country and bluegrass songs.

2) Do you support the current degree of censorship of the Internet? That is, do you feel it is just about right? Do you think it should be stricter? Less strict? Should it be done away with altogether?

I do not support the current levels of censorship, and believe they should be done away with altogether, with the exception of those few sites which promote child pornography, explicitly incite violence, or are engaged in blatantly illegal activities (selling stolen goods, for example).

3) What would you think of a system in which individual users got to choose whether they wanted their access to the net censored, as opposed to the current one where everyone's access to certain sites is blocked?

I would certainly see this as an improvement on the current situation.

17 September, 2005 11:58
Anonymous said...

1) How often, if ever, have you had trouble accessing material you would consider legitimate to view?

So many times, and I got angry at how inaccurate their censorship !!


2) Do you support the current degree of censorship of the Internet?

Well, I think that censoring websites by mistake is better than having others open when they should be blocked ... !!!

3) What would you think of a system in which individual users got to choose whether they wanted their access to the net censored, as opposed to the current one where everyone's access to certain sites is blocked?

Well, I wouldn't support that , as I am sure that most of this service subscribers will misuse it ... even me , nobody is perfect and no body can resist this temptation .. if censorship is obligatory , then I assume that some can break through !!

I'll support any thing that will not lead to acts that conflict with UAE Culture & its Islamic Belief

17 September, 2005 12:04
Keef said...

1) How often, if ever, have you had trouble accessing material you would consider legitimate to view?

Frequently.

2) Do you support the current degree of censorship of the Internet? That is, do you feel it is just about right? Do you think it should be stricter? Less strict? Should it be done away with altogether?

People who don't want it should not be forced to have it. As has been mentioned elsewhere, you can still get 'objectionable' via P2P, satellite TV etc. I believe there are also ways to bypass the proxy. And, perfectly legally, people in TECOM / Nakheel / Emaar properties have uncensored Internet access.

3) What would you think of a system in which individual users got to choose whether they wanted their access to the net censored, as opposed to the current one where everyone's access to certain sites is blocked?

Yes, if some people want their Internet censored and slowed down to a snail's pace by the proxy, they can pay Etisalat for the privilege.

18 September, 2005 21:58
Anonymous said...

censorship is bad. Etisalat sould wake up and smell the coffee. It's a free world and people should have choices. Etislat please stop acting like Big Brother. What you are doing is frustrating and annoying.

04 January, 2006 21:00

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