Censorship Again

Yesterday, Scotch forwarded me the following statement from our internet service provider (du) regarding the start of censorship:

“It is our constant endeavour to maintain the perfect balance between ensuring that all our customers’ requirements are met, and that we comply with all the guidelines of the TRA, including those on internet content filtering.

The World Wide Web offers us great opportunities to get and share information and to communicate. However, it is imperative that when making use of this technology for its enormous benefits, we respect the moral, social and cultural values of the United Arab Emirates.

du will be blocking all content that is not in line with these values, effective from 14 April 2008. Due to the nature of the content filtering process, some harmless sites may also inadvertently be blocked. We request our customers’ assistance in informing us when a site that they consider harmless has been blocked, by writing to safesurf@du.ae so we can look into the matter.

du counts on the understanding, support and encouragement of each of our valued customers as we continue to further strengthen our portfolio of products and services, and with all the systems that will fall into place in the process.”

Previously, du customers (me) were able to access many sites that were blocked by the other UAE internet provider (Etisalat). Sites like s k y p e. Which is still working by the way.

Websites that contain pornography, hatred, child abuse, alcohol, gambling or terrorism are blocked using filtering software that recognizes the subject material and blocks the sites from being viewed. For more on this story, click here.

So if I were to access let’s say the p l a y g i r l website, this is what I would see:

My question is – why do they bother? Well, I know why, but It’s not like we can’t use a p r o x y to access these sites.