YouTube to be banned in the UAE (awaiting confirmation)
March 15th, 2009This message will be retweeted a few dozen times before the real local outrage begins:
We heard these rumors in the past, but more and more people seem to be confirming that these aren’t just false alarms anymore and that YouTube will actually be banned officially in the UAE. We can’t be totally sure yet until the site is totally inaccessible for our friends and members there, and according to them no action has been taken yet (despite thousands of other sites being blocked) however many are expecting it.
Will the ban fail like it did with Facebook? Is the UAE testing the waters with how much internet censorship it can get away with?
That depends entirely on the public outcry. So get talking! And if you’re in the UAE, please give us updates on the situation.
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Oh wow – not long after Iran, the acclaimed ‘Internet enemy’- unblocks YouTube, we hear this. Government officials had been railing against YT and its evil influence, but I never thought they’d go as far as blocking the entire site. I’m not sure where they’re going with this; all it would achieve is more negative publicity.
I don’t understand why they ban websites, this happened before in Syria, now we have YouTube, FaceBook, Wikipedia, Skype, .. all blocked.
Almost every useful website.. or interactive website.
Even when we setup email clients such as outlook, the ougoing mail box should be set to our ISP settings something like mail.isp.sy instead of mail.gmail.com so that they can still monitor everything.
In a technical point of view, they can monitor everything without doing any service blocking by monitoring the data flow over there leased lines.
I once asked my friend who works in an ISP over here about this and his reply was, yes of course they can manage to monitor the data flow but it’s a hard task and takes time so why to use much resources, block sites and services is the easiest way.
Which simply means saving money for ISP’s.
Imagine if they provide some free internet!
Rima, Syria is a different story! The amount of censorship there is just alarming and no Syrian official has ever bothered justifying these bans other than vaguely stating time and again that it poses a “serious threat” against “national security.” On the bright side, I bet that’s why some of the best proxy developers are Syrian.
Well, it still hasn’t been blocked, and no mention of it in the local press either.
Days ago, they had spoken of blocking access to certain content (which is something that they already do – I imagine they intend to impose harsher rules) and denied that they will impose a full blackout.
I believe this whole saga was sparked by a video posted by an offensive Israeli cartoon
At least we’ll still have MidEastYouth.
Turkey started the club of banning YouTube didn’t they? They did.
Turkey banned YouTube after hundreds of videos were showing up on youtube exposing the Turkish authorities’ atrocities against Kurds.
That, and the tens of videos uploaded that targeted the Turkish State’s long dead idol, Ataturk.
In the USA I depend on sites like YouTube to fill in the gaps left by our media. We can see a story about Americans doing one thing in the Mid East and then find amature video, posted by a local person, that shows something that can confirm, contradict, or add depth to the information.
I hope there will remain a direct line of communication between my computer and people in these areas. I only know what I have access to and when people in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, UAE, etc lose access to those tools, I can’t tell what my government is doing. I’m sure everyone on earth has a certain level of distrust for the media. We need direct lines, like Mideastyouth.com , Youtube, and blogs to work together on the same level.
Apparently, they’re in talks with Google:
As Nelson would say, “Ha Ha”
Well…we can use VPN to bypass blocking.
VPN
they might aswell ban the internet alltogether over here, i mean its bad enough i cant watch porn lol but now i cant watch anything..
to UAE gov “fuck you”
i cant understand their intention. youtube, as infuriating it can be sometimes, provides an alternative source of information that fills an informative gap in the media. most of the documentaries I watch, and my daily dosage of Al Jazeera, is usually done on youtube.
certain words (the obvious things ofcourse, sex, porn, gay, etc…) are immediatly blocked from the search box.
youtube is misused, no doubt about that, but banning a whole website altogether is not the solution. the internet situation is asphyxiating enough. i wish that the goverment would give us a choice on the sources of information we cant infiltrate.
The UAE is a filth infested country that does not need to ban anything. Why ban you tube when the country is an international prostitution hot spot. Not to mention that the UAE nationals love sucking white cock!! Ban you-Tube? That’s a joke, who are you kidding?
It’s blocked….as of yesterday
This country is an absolute ******* joke.
The UAE is a filth infested country that does not need to ban anything. Why ban you tube when the country is an international prostitution hot spot. Not to mention that the UAE nationals love sucking white cock!! Ban you-Tube? That’s a joke, who are you kidding?