An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
GOVERNMENTS in the Middle East are stepping up their efforts at Internet censorship and surveillance, according to the report for 2007 put out by the journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
The report says that five of the world's top thirteen Internet censors are in the Middle East, making net communications and access to web-based information and services problematic for an estimated 33.5 million regional Internet users.
Quote:
"The Web makes networking much easier, for political activists as well as teenagers,"
said the report. "Unfortunately, this progress and use of new tools by activists is now being matched by the efforts of dictatorships to fight them. Dictators, too, have entered the world of Web 2.0."
Internet censorship efforts vary in different countries, according to a Ibab al Zalaky, managing editor of a respected Egyptian newspaper that published a comprehensive report on the subject last year.
Only four Arab countries have little or no filtering -- Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco -- but Egypt is considering a law banning some online activities and even some countries that don't have advanced filtering technology have prosecuted individuals for their blog postings on religious or political topics.
Most hostile to Internet use are Saudi Arabia and Syria, rights activists say.
All of the countries on the Arabian Peninsula filter online content, with Saudi Arabia being the most stringent. Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar all also have filtering in place.
Syria reportedly blocks online book and music vendor Amazon.com as well as Blogspot, Hotmail, Skype and You Tube.
The rest of the region is said to fall somewhere in between, but governments are importing filtering technology and writing laws to suppress online dissent.
Iran's theocracy proudly blocks 10 million "immoral" web sites, all the online social networking services and dozens of web pages about politics or religion.
Tunisia and Sudan block some political web sites and others deemed offensive. Algeria and Libya have drawn criticism for prosecution of online dissidents.
Some countries in the Middle East are cooperating to share online filtering and surveillance technology.
"Now there's some common work among the Arab governments to censor the Internet. They're acting like they're fighting terrorists," complained journalist al Zalaky. "There's no good news. They're all making it harder for people to access the Internet."
However, Hannah Allam, writing for McClatchy, reports that Middle Eastern Internet users are resourceful at circumventing governmental restrictions by using proxy servers. She writes:
Quote:
"In cyber cafes from Damascus to Dubai, patrons furtively browse blocked sites and swap Web addresses for the latest 'proxies.' The most tech-savvy young Arabs and Iranians use new proxies every day, trying to stay a step ahead of government censors."
And some are even using satellite links to avoid Internet censorship altogether.
Digg Topic
Tag topic on On del.icio.us
Technorati Search
Post to Slashdot
