Youtube blocked in Morocco
Sad news from Morocco.
Since yesterday Maroc Telecom has blocked all access to Youtube.
The Moroccan blogosphere (blogoma) is totally surprised by the move and angered.
There were no reasons given why Youtube was blocked. But the speculations are that it might have to do something with the presence of Polisario-clips (Polisario being the Western Sahara independence movement) or because of some videos that were criticized the king.
The block by Maroc Telecom means that the majority of the population has no access to Youtube. The majority that is. The other 2 internet-providers, Wana and Meditel, do provide access to Youtube.
The reason for this is that Morocco is blessed with commercial, private providers (not state-owned).
The Moroccan state is a major shareholder of Maroc Telecom and can do what it want with it.
Youtube is the 3rd example of how Morocco blocks access to major sites. Google Earth and Livejournal being the other 2 examples. Also blocked without a reason.
Clearly Maroc Telecom and the government have no idea how the internet works and that these kind of moves only hurts them.
A sad, sad day.
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I just posted this in the forums a couple of hours ago, it truly surprises me greatly. Out of ALL countries…. Morocco?!
When Google Earth was blocked in Bahrain we all went nuts over it.. couldn’t imagine what would happen if both LJ and YouTube got blocked too. Sometimes it leads me to wonder, is there a big enough protest over this? I think there needs to be an overwhelming movement of some sort..
Yesterday Google Earth and LJ, today YouTube, tomorrow what? Blogger, wordpress, flickr?
I wish to see a campaign or at the very least a petition over this! It’s nothing to be silent over.
Yes out of all countries, Morocco. We seem to take steps back instead of forward. 2 steps forward, 1 step back all the time.
It really angers me actually.
The problem is Esra’a, that it is “officialy” not government-sponsored and officialy not blocked as well.
The other providers still give access to it. So if people complain theyw ill simply get the answer that they change their provider.
Besides that, Vivendi Universal owns 51% of the shares of Maroc Telecom, it really saddens me that an european company willingly blocks a site for no reason.
I hope to see a campaign/petition as well. I’m mailing other moroccan bloggers now to see what they think
Dude, SERIOUSLY!!! haha I’m sorry man, I hope you’re not a moroc telecom subscriber, so you wouldn’t have to go through all the proxies mess and all that!
same things happen all the time here in tunisia. recently dailymotion was blocked for some time. A lot of sites cannot be accessed. And here, when they block a site, it’s not the provider that does it, it is a special agency whose job is to keep an eye on all internet connections and access, which means that when a site is blocked ALL users cannot have access to it, unless they use a special professional direct access without beeing controlled by this agency, which is rarely the case in some private companies offices.
Great Youssef, let us know if we can help in any way.
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I think you guys are maybe over reacting. Yes …its censorship and yes its undemocratic. But maybe its the government way of hindering aggresive fundamentalist propaganda.
Unfortunately morocco doesnt have infinite resources to fight on the ground. Hindering the spread of terrorist vidoes that sometimes show up on places like u tube could be a temporary start.
Nabile,
if its truely because of fundamentalist propaganda then the government needs to realize that this is a wrong step.
Combatting hatred on the net is useless. The videos will just show up on other sites.
If this is the way they combat it, I eagerly await the censorship of tv-channels that spread hatred.
Besides that, you can hardly find fundamentalist propaganda on youtube. Its being moderated all the time.
The moroccan government usually censors criticism on the king and the western sahara policies.
I’m almost sure that this is the case now as well.
Although we will never know for sure since the government never gives any explanation why they block something
it’s SO easy to claim that this is a way to protect people. It’s always the same answer.
If you want freedom, you don’t put limits to it. This is not a method of preventing propaganda and terrorism. If you find videos with dangerous content, you can ask to remove them. Blocking the site is just abusive censorship, and this is not a good method for a country like Morocco which is trying to improve its image and fight for freedom. Very bad idea
Youssef,
A safe fredom of information and speech should be accompanied with it’s corresponding level of education. Have some faith in your homeland’s leaders.
Youssef II,
The problem with your argument, if I understood it correctly, is that you don’t realize that freedom of information and education come hand in hand. If there is censorship, and no awareness, and if social networking sites continue to be blocked for “protection,” please tell me HOW are these people going to be exposed to other ways of thinking, and how shall they be educated?
People need to know what’s going on regardless of the content. They need to listen, to read, to watch, to hear, and then to judge for themselves. You can’t keep hiding other opinions for the sake of “protection,” this isn’t protection, this is downright censorship which is a violation of the basic right for the citizens to know.
friday almasae newspaper was talking abt youtube so they was blocked it
Its a long time every thing is blocked in Iran.Using Torpark software may help:
http://www.download.com/Torpark/3000-2356_4-10586816.html
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it also is block in iran. but no problem. becuse you can opened it with proxy servers or webproxy sites and other methods!
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Original Youssef – Thanks again for pushing this – no one else seems to really believe in free speech, judging by the comments in this blog and mine.
Youssef II – how can we put our faith in Morocco’s government when they’ve managed to arrest journalists, ban journalists, exile journalists, and ban websites in the past couple of years, without support of the people?
I personally do not believe that the government is doing this because of fundamentalist sites; if that’s all they’re concerned about, then why would they have arrested the Nichane journalists last year?
Agreed with Jillian. There is no valid excuse for this kind of censorship.
Hmmm.. they seem to block everything in Saudi.. I did not think Morocco had this much of a censorship. I am surprised
from spain…. fundamentalist governments are responsable for these kind of things. they are men who would let girls be trampled to death, rather than see them in public unscarved… god know what they can do if they feel internet is not secure…
these type of news make me feel sad about freedom of speech and so on.
it’s not that bad after all to laugh about somebody, you must be tolerant
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Google Earth was banned to prevent people from seeing Sensitive place in Morocco, like royal palaces and security points.
Live Journal I dont know!
Youtube is either because of Western Sahara video (I will not call propaganda because if they were propaganda than why be weak, overreact and ban people from viewing it! why not promote Moroccan Sahara videos in response! and most Western Sahara video are filled with Moroccan commentators saying its Moroccan anyway)
Or because there was this video made-by-algerian or polisario mocking the king and showing him as a Hitler kind of king which can be shocking towards Moroccan…
but then they could have asked youtube to delete it because of terrorism incitement instead of baning youtube!
The video is still in there! this will make even more people make videos like this! and just shows how weak our governement is and our cause for western sahara is
this is a sad thing! We will never move forward like this! people are flying creating the world while us still fighting about small stuff.
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the good thing with Internet is that there is always more than one way to get somewhere.
http://www.youtube.com or http://youtube.on.ma/
Younes, exactly, and also one can easily mirror sites these days.
http://www.freekareem.org or http://www.savekareem.org
If one is blocked we use the other; if the other is blocked we create and use the other, etc. Technology is limitless!
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finaly Moroccan they can have acces to youtube ,Maroc telecom deblock it
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I was very surprised myself with the arresting of the Nichane editor and journalist. And now banning Youtube!
I really think that Morocco should realize that blocking things are not the exact solution. Instead, they should use these sites to communicate with their people. But, they look as if they’re afraid of the Net!
I really hope that all this will be solved and let Morocco have its “real” freedom on access to information.
La censura que lleva a cabo la monarquia marroqui no es mas de uno de sus tanto metodos de represión, en marruecos jamas ha habido ni habra democracia como el resto de los paises arabe, no gobiernan tirantes,dictadores y les conviene mantenenos el la mas absoluta ignorancia.
el rey de maruecos quien es? no es mas que una persona como todos los demas, deberia ser asi, quien le ha dado tonto previlegio?y tantas chorrada?
quien le ha nombrado principe de los creientes? me pregunto y eso de que va?
se siente amo de todos los marroquies y ellos sus siervo, verguenza ajena me dan, con esta mentalidad seguiran el la cola de los paises atrasado como la mayoria de los paises arabe,y eso es lo que conviene a los monarcas arabes. no saben que eso es cosa de hace siglos, las monarquias actuales son simpolicas y no intervienen en la politica mas que para el bien , la dejan en manos del pueblo y eso si que es democracia, el problema es que cambiara antes la hermetica china que los paises arabe. porque? esa es la pregunta. en mi opinión la respuesta esta en la censura y la cobardia del ser árabe.el estancamiento. y cuidado de lanzar la pelota a los occidentales,eso es parte de nuestra hipocrsia,cobardia,etc… no habran cambio en los paises árabes sin el cambio de la mentalidad, y la obertura al resto de las demas culturas y religiones. y sobre todo cambio de gobernantes.y de AMOS Y ESCLAVOS DE LAS MONARQUIAS ÃRABES Y SOBRE TODO LA MARROQUÃ
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More services like http://www.strongvpn.com will pop up as users try to get a outside handle on governmental controls.
There’s really no way to block sites, I don’t know why they try.
Listen ppl, first of all we are not america, we are not western countries and we will never be. we ppl are muslim countries, never forget that, somethings cannot mix, you can’t spread utter democracy and freedom of speech, of course you can let anybody say what ever they want but their liberty or anybody’s freedom stops when it crosses somebod’s else, in another word, Morocco is country of values, traditions, culture, if we let anybody mock our own principles, our own values and whatever we stand for, we will lose our identity…this not because somebody says or post but because of how exponentially a negative propanganda can spread and how it affects ppl, especiallhy for ppl who don’t know otherwise (ppl who don’t know about the lifestyle and traditions in morocco, they never experince all the good stuff that makes Morocco a very special land). So stop ppl, we will never be like the west, it only gonna reflect an even worse propaganda, the one that just confirms the first (that we do not know who we are and what we do)
We can only take what’s good from the west to an extent ( modernity, open diplomacy, education of all sorts , scientific advances and technology)…we shall not assimilate what might compromise our identity. ( Morocco is a muslim conservative afable monarchy yet with open arms to foreign diplomacy and relations).
ya understand folks
I am totally with the Moroccan government in taking this step to block youtube.com China do similar things and block certain internet content that will interfere with its internal politics. some videos on youtube and mostly the ones watched by Moroccans are leading to corruption. Sharing those type of videos will help spread the corruption if anyone would wanna argue with me go and watch some if not all the videos posted by Moroccan, simply garbidge and insult to the king is that called freedom speech and how is youtube you will help promote it. I think it helps demote the moral and help in corrupting Moroccans.
Corruption is stopped by whistleblowers, not by blocking websites. Write letters to newspapers asking them to take a chance and be more aware of corruption. There are many other ways corruption is stopped, but blocking the Internet is not one of them. Sites like Youtube allow corruption to be stopped if anything.
For example, what if you knew of a corrupt state worker. You knew that he was driving a Mercedes Benz, and that he had a house way over his pay grade. A video could be made mocking him, and posted on Youtube. The video would spread like wild fire, and the publicity would be bad for him. No one wants that kind of exposure.
It’s a information tool, and it can work both ways. Use it.
There are always ways around a government block, so what use is it for the government to do so? It only hurts the children and other users that use the site for educational purposes.
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It’s really an impressive posting.
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