No more Internet pornography in Egypt
Warning! This post is very old and may contain information or opinions that are no longer valid or embarrassing.
Blocking porn sites is not the main issue here, there are ways to circumvent censorship and if people want to watch porn, and they do, they will resurrect VHS.
A chart fromGoogle Insightshowing the search for the term "sex" and "سكس", originating from Egypt and from 2004 till now. The annual dip in search, marked with the red R, coincides with the month of Ramadan.
This ruling is like legalizing the monitoring of people's thoughts and controlling what they want to see. Perhaps tomorrow they will want to control what you think of too.
I understand that a court can make the production of pornographic material in Egypt illegal, which is currently the case, because of the possibility of abuse of minors and women through trafficking, etc..
Another problem is the blurry definition of "obscene sites" that is described in the ruling as sites that "destroy the values of the family and society that injects its poisons and spreads vice." I am sure that inclusion of political thought considered by the government as astray is next. Didn't this already happen?
In the UAE they keep on blocking and unblocking Flickr because some nude or semi-nude photography. Which is not pornographic by any means. The UAE reduced Flickr, the best photo sharing website in the world, into a valueless site.
I am sure that everyone who will attack this ruling will come up with the boring argument about the 'costs' of blocking those sites, which is enormous, but this is beside the point. The problem is having a ruling that permits blocking under dubious virtues,thrust upon us now by a judge who thinks he knows better.
So what's next the creation of the committee of the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice?
Comments
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Jonathan
can you please send me a link to the court ruling (even in arabic)?
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moftasa
Arabic http://www.masrawy.com/News... and an article on the Daily News Egypt about this ruling http://www.thedailynewsegyp...
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Jonathan
thanks, but i wanted the actual court decision if you have. I'm working on an article about it for a mid-east studies journal.
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Nadine
Excellent! Merci !
nadine -
ahmedbadr
I don't understand. It's September now. Are they still gonna do this?!
سيناء حيث أنا
المواقع الاباحية متاحة في كل الدول العربية حتي في الخليج
هي لا تزعج أحدا
وثمة برامج الان للوصول للمواقع المحجوبة
وما يدريك أن تكون تلك مقدمة لدروس سورية حول حجب المواقع المزعجة
ElMo2dab
Not in the gulf my friend, its all blocked there. They have what you call a proxy, that blocks pornography of any sort. I have lived there for a while and its a real annoyance when a page has a few bad words or porno ads.. anyway.. i wont be surprised if it comes to Egypt