YouTube to be banned in the UAE?

Sometimes you hear about things in the weirdest ways - these days it is Twitter:



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?

Not yet confirmed or not yet guaranteed, but worrying none the less.

Fake Plastic Souks follows up:

We would be following the exalted example of two of the world's most successful states, Pakistan and Bangladesh if we went for a ban. As KT reports, Bangladesh blocked YouTube last Sunday, Pakistan in February last year.

Lt Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim was talking to the general assembly of the Juveniles Education and Care Association when he apparently said that YouTube contained content that 'sparked dissension'. He is reported as saying to Emarat Al Youm that 'publishing pornography and defamation is not freedom.'

Blocking YouTube will further deny Emirati, and other, youth here of the opportunity to embrace a range of technologies and changes in social behaviour that are revolutionising the world around us.

That we are even contemplating blocking sites that contain content we don't like is a deep concern - the trick is engaging in a conversation, taking part in the interplay of ideas and opinion that is driving the Internet - and the flow of public opinion around the world today.

Dubai Jazz talks reason:

with all due respect to Lieutenant General Dhahi, he is a law enforcement officer, he sees the darker side of town every day; murders, riots, drug smuggling...the whole nine yards. He might have come across crimes that were, for the sake of argument, inspired by youtube. But that’s not the grand picture is it? the society, any society as a whole, needs interactive media websites because the benefits outweighs the damages by many folds. Youtube isn’t only about dissent and defamation, it’s also about education, interaction, dialogue and understanding. So a total ban on the website is not the answer.


Let's hope sense is seen.

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