Yahoo Clubs Site Blocked By Saudi Arabia

so.what writes: "C|net has a story about Yahoo's clubs site being blocked by Saudi Arabia because the contents of the site were "against the kingdom's religious, social and political values." Seems to be another situation where "Big Brother" is looking out for you. "Big Brother" isn't just here in the U.S. folks. Click here to read the full story." Saudi Arabia uses a modified version of the Smartfilter Internet censoring software to censor the Internet access of the entire country. It's not 100% effective, but anyone getting around it is risking legal punishment.

So use web proxies

[Tairan]

Such as www.askjesus.org [askjesus.org] (hehe, I'm sure that would go over real well) or anonymizer.com [anonymizer.com]

Why was Yahoo singled out?

[Cadre]

Why were Yahoo clubs singled out? The content in the clubs could not have comprised more than a fraction of a percent of material available on the internet that would be "against the kingdom's religious, social and political values."

Hmmm...

[Siqnal 11]

The broader problem, be it with France, Germany (remember Germany and CompuServe?) or anywhere else, is that we seem to confuse a belief in the goodness of freedom of the exchange of information and ideas between individuals with the freedom of commercial services to propagate anything they wish regardless of national laws, cultures or sensibilities.

Germany in particular has some rather strong legislation against promulgating any images or items that are Nazi or Nazi-like. The French have strong feelings on this score as well, perhaps because they're still torn between the romanticized Resistance and Vichy's roundup and handover of France's Jews to Hitler.

Whatever the cause, an online venue becomes a "place," and apparently the French don't want certain kinds of "places" on their cybersoil.

Unlike these countries, in the USA we have fairly wide liberties (albeit threatened), because as a people we can be controlled and manipulated by passive consumption of television and whatever else passes for mass entertainment, like spectator sports. Notice that the people the big corporations are challenging are outfits like 2600 who don't and won't fit into the groove. American culture is sort of a universal solvent - it gives one a sense of empowerment but mainly empowerment to consume information, ideas, and opinions delivered by corporate boardrooms - unless you choose to step outside the box, and at that point things get uncomfortable.

Other societies vest other authorities as arbiters of what's right or wrong in their cultures. Would I prefer some Left-Bank deconstructionist 's views on culture to those of Steve Case? That's what we're up against these days. So yeah, we do have a problem, Houston, but it's deeper than laws and enforcement.

Re:So use web proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to use encrypted web proxies, so they can't catch you. Like lm.lcs.mit.edu.

Come on, now.

[Karma Gigolo]

Here we go again, assuming that every other nation in the world should follow the Great USAdian Example. Whether you like it or not, some countries feel like they have a duty to keep their citizens from seeing some stuff. And whether you like it or not, it's the right of whoever's ruling that country to decide what and how much of it gets blocked. And no amount of yelling and hellraising from USAdians is going to change that.

Re:Come on, now.

[pallex]

Yeah, and some countries are just `wrong`, unless you think that women shouldnt be able to drive/work/read etc...

Re:Come on, now.

[JCCyC]

Yeah, and some countries are just `wrong`, unless you think that women shouldnt be able to drive/work/read etc...

Amen to that brother. Relativism my ass!

Xian Fundie: - Grrrrrrr!!!
Islam Fundie: - What, you want a war? I'm game.
Xian Fundie: - No, I'm just envious of how you managed to keep your side in the Middle Age and I didn't.
Islam Fundie: - Ah, don't be so sore. With patience and hard work I'm sure you'll be able to bring them all back to unreason.
Xian Fundie: - Well, you're right, the dumbification of the West is going rather well... but it's so maddeningly slow!
Islam Fundie: - Patience, brother. Patience and persistence. In the meantime, shall we have a little war to relax?
Xian Fundie: - Let's.

Form a full assualt!

[Valar]

Well, first they raise oil prices, then they ban Yahoo. They obviously have something against the 'christian' nations of the world. I say we crusade. What do you think. We could conquer it and name it Sealand v2.0 or maybe Desertland... NOTE: I have nothing against the Saudi Arabians other than the fact that their country is ruled by a tyranical, closed mind, unintelligent dictatorship.

Re:Why was Yahoo singled out?

[lasertech]

While the article may have mentioned that Yahoo clubs were singled out, blocked web pages in Saudi Arabia are so numerous it defys logic at times. I live and work in Riyadh and it has become somewhat of a pastime among Westerners and some Saudis here to try to find sites that aren't blocked. The filtering software is rather hit or miss and also has the added affect of considerably slowing download speeds. At this point, even though some Saudi communications experts have even suggested that the goeverment needs to get out of the net censorship business and trust the population to do the right thing. We'll see.

What can be done?

[Yossi]

Whereas this move seems to run against the ethos that many in this forum hold dear (namely, that the internet is to be about freedom i.e. exchange of ideas yada yada yada), there really is very little that we could od about it.

I suppose that we (the larger internet community) could choose to boycott them. I mean literally not send anything to them, request anything from them, rout around them all together etc... But that seems pointless in that it would run counter to our own ethos and probably not bother them at all.

We could also try to e-mail bomb them with freedom of expression stuff, but I as fun as that sounds I doubt highschool type pranks would accomplish much of anything.

In the end though, when you think about it this is not a major rights infringement considering what other countries in that region do to thier own citizens.

Re:Why was Yahoo singled out?

[The Old Professor]

Brother, I think you miss the point. The problem with the clubs.yahoo is that they were created by Saudi citizens and/or resident aliens and thus reflect on the Kingdom. Some of the clubs were devoted to employee organizations, some to nationalities (Filipino, Bangladeshi), some to popular football players or coaches. All well and good. But some were devoted to Metallica or Nirvana. Some were devoted to discussing Saudi politics. And the great majority was devoted to sex: teen sex, extramarital sex, gay/les, nude photos of Saudi teens. Now, the Old Professor isn't going to debate the ethics of censorship (which he hates with a passion) or women's rights or political rights. But, having lived eight years in the Magic Kingdom, he can give you the situation on the ground: 1. Government is authoritarian, but policy is managed to balance the interests and prejudices of the powerful. That means that whenever something changes West-ward (like the introduction of Internet access, 1/99), the conservatives have to be accommodated. In the Internet's case, all traffic through in-Kingdom ISPs goes through a huge proxy server at King Khaled City for Science and Technology, there to be scanned for political and moral correctness (to the extent practical). 2. There are no public movie theatres in KSA and no venues for public assembly except mosques and sports stadiums. (Consider: Why does the US Bill of Rights protect the right of assembly?) 3. The purpose of marriage is to forge political and property alliances between families and to maintain the continuity and integrity of the lineage. This is just like Renaissance Europe and the moral line is the same too: women are controlled because their purpose is reproduction and illegitimacy would muddy the lines of inheritance and alliance. In tandem, unmarried young men are regarded as loose cannons. Marriages are arranged and almost everybody marries (even if gay). In sum: sex is a powerful, potentially subversive force everywhere in the world, and the Saudis have to deal with it in terms of where they've drawn the lines of battle. Thus ends the lesson for the day.