06 July, 2008

no longer stumbling

stumbleupon seems to be blocked by etisalat. because apparently, the 'sharing' of anything remotely interesting under the sun is inconsistent with alllllll applicable values of the UAE.
does anyone in TRA even understand english? or can anyone use a browser to at least first visit the websites they are blocking?
Posted by hemlock at 10:21 am
Labels: , , ,

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You've obviously not been to an etisalat office as of late . . .

06 July, 2008 12:38
Anonymous said...

yet again on the same topic, I have to ask, why is Flickr blocked? Especially when countries like Germany have worked with yahoo to implement a safe-search feature? why are etisalat so bone idle that they can't look into the same? anyway, i'm past relying on etisalat, its all about the other..ehm.. ways of getting unrestricted access.

06 July, 2008 16:10
Alexander said...

It'll go on. They'll keep blocking social sites through a lack of understanding of the nature of the technology and how people are using it as well as changing social patterns.

The worst thing is that it isn't Etisalat, or even the TRA. The whole exclusion list is maintained by a US company, Secure Computing. I needed to look up some cached content today and found it, perfectly innocent though it was, blocked too.

It's frustrating precisely because it's increasingly rendering people who live and work here ignorant of many new Internet based services and capabilities - for instance, Twitter or Flickr. There's little point in doing, for instance, a Yahoo! image search now, because most of the resulting links to content are blocked.

All people can do is keep up the pressure - keep complaining and keep pointing out that, while many of us sympathise and even agree regarding the true moral and cultural values of the UAE (for instance, blocking commercial porn), this whole clamp down on social networking and sharing is becoming an issue that threatens to have a truly detrimental effect on the development of the country's online communities.

Somehow, someone has got to take the chance to show them what this stuff is, what it means, how it works, the changing world it's working in and why they're wrong to be blanket banning it.

Sorry. Rant over.

06 July, 2008 16:37
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
06 July, 2008 16:48
samuraisam said...

anonymous: that is most probably your own IP address that you're pasting for the whole world to know, as such I'm going to delete your post.

To get around that problem when using internet explorer, go to tools>internet options>connections>lan settings and untick the 'use proxy' option. Keep in mind normal browsing will be slower when doing this and some sites may not work.

06 July, 2008 17:45
Anonymous said...

Not a problem with du-du ...... yet ! But I'm sure they'll have a go sooner or later.

06 July, 2008 18:50
Anonymous said...

common guys... why is their a hype being created over stumble being blocked... ((as if etisalat is gonna read what u guys write, think or feel))... i have been in dubai for 25 years... and is it a new news for the public that sites are being blocked? Ofcoure NO! So, quitely get back to your work :)

07 July, 2008 13:18
Anonymous said...

i wrote about you here,
http://arabcrunch.com/2008/07/stumbleupon-blocked-by-uae-largest-teleco-etisalat.html

08 July, 2008 02:54
Anonymous said...

Hmmm... now StumbleUpon is unblocked by Etisalat, although searching for adult material is still blocked.

@CC - Why do you think StumbleUpon is now unblocked?

15 July, 2008 12:46

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