Saudi Arabia blocks Blogger
The Saudis Arabians blocked access to blogger.com, thereby silencing bloggers within the kingdom. Apparently there is still access to blogspot.com which is where many Blogger blogs are published to. The folks at Reporters without Borders are following this.Reporters Without Borders today called on the Internet Services Unit (ISU), the agency that manages Web filtering in Saudi Arabia, to explain why the weblog creation and hosting service blogger.com has been made inaccessible since 3 October, preventing Saudi bloggers from updating their blogs.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that censors the Internet the most, but blog services had not until now been affected by the ISU’s filters,” the press freedom organisation said. “The complete blocking of blogger.com, which is one of the biggest blog tools on the market, is extremely worrying. Only China had so far used such an extreme measure to censor the Internet.”
Reached by Reporters Without Borders, the ISU recognised that it had blocked access to blogger.com but did not give any reason. Blogger.com is the point of entry to the management interface for all the weblogs hosted on this tool. In other words, this is the webpage bloggers need to access to update their blogs. According to our tests, names under the blogger.com domain (for example, www.myblog.blogger.com) are not however being filtered. This means that Saudi Internet users can still access the blogs hosted on this service.
The Saudi authorities acknowledge blacklisting more than 400,000 websites. A very wide range of sites are affected, including political organisations, non-recognised Islamist movements and publications containing any kind of reference to sexuality.
posted by Liberty @ 5:45 AM
3 Comments:
Hi, Liberty. I wonder if the time frame of this has anything to do with this book that just came out and made the news the other day (can't remember what network). The book was published September 23rd 2005 and it's called "Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, And Culture". I haven't read the book, but it's the first one I've heard of about blogs beyond just instructional information (I could be wrong about that). I wonder if there's a connection...
-V
I don't think so. Hugh Hewett wrote a simuler book that came out in January, and there wasn't much reaction. I think it has more to do with the up comming elections and constitution in Iraq. There is a bunch of Arabs that think this is a good thing. A monarchial dictatorship would be concerned.
That being said I don't believe the block will be effective nor long term, there are other ways to put out a blog and even to access Blogger, and things tend to wave in and out of favor with the seasons.
yes... attractive text.
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