Haddad was arguing for that as a major advance. Some of that traffic will be devoted to such mundane matters as e-commerce for basic household necessities. But ongoing trends are likely to lend growing weight to the argument against this position.Īccording to Wissam El Solh, CEO of Netakeoff in Beirut, Lebanon, Internet penetration among the 280 million people in the Arab world will increase from 2 million users last year to 3.5 million this year to more than 30 million in 2005. Haddad was arguing the point that some government control of content is not necessarily a bad thing.
"The Arab person in general looks for curiosity and entertainment on the Internet." "Knowledge is not owned by anybody," said Anas Haddad, content manager of Saudia Arabia-based, during the panel discussion. They teach each other ways to reach certain sites." So people living in these countries become amateur hackers. "Some proxies are advanced and powerful enough to block your searches. "Here in the United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia and in Syria, there are government-controlled proxies that block traffic and filter it. "We have to ask ourselves: Should government be allowed to censor the Internet?" he said. It gets people thinking about the larger world out there. "For more information on Emirates Internet services, click here."Įl Khoury and others who favor political and cultural liberalization in the Arab world see the lure of the sex sites as a good thing. "Emirates Internet denies access to this site," the page reads. A message pops up on the screen announcing that the site in question is on the "Emirates Internet Control List." The screen shows what looks like a large diamond-shaped stop sign reading, "Blocked site," flashing in English and Arabic. It does not store any personal data.The United Arab Emirates, like many other countries in the Arab world, block users from accessing such content - or at least try.įor example, if a visitor at the Abu Dhabi Hilton types in he encounters a stop sign. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
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