I’m taking a class, and one of my classmates is from an Islamic country (she didn’t specify which one).
She asserts that the governments of all Islamic countries have made it so it’s impossible to access porn sites.
Is this actually possible? I imagine ISPs could take some steps to limit the stuff, but is it possible to get rid of it altogether (which is what she implied)?
While visiting a friend in Singapore, he explained that they have essentially set up a firewall around the whole country, and use that to block objectionable content using a blacklist.
China also has a Great Firewall.
It doesn’t make it impossible to access porn or subversive material, especially if you can find an available proxy server that hasn’t been blacklisted, or you can establish an ssh tunnel somewhere outside. But for the general internet-using population, there is a lot of stuff that’s either heavily filtered or not available at all.
That is certainly not true in Bahrain.
It is not difficult for governments to block access to all or parts of the Internet. There are regular news stories about China’s offten successful censorship practices within its own borders. One may surmise other countries do the same for reasons known only to them.
But next door in Qatar, I can’t access any sight with naughty bits in. Except a few phots by Man Ray that slipped through once.
Well, our libraries and schools try to accomplish the same thing with filtering software, so that’s one approach. Another is the “firewall the whole country” approach mentioned above, although that sounds labor intensive and easily circumvented. One more approach is to only allow people to connect to “approved” IP addresses. Although I’m guessing that anyone who really wants to get obscene content and is willing to risk what are probably nasty societal sanctions can do so.
That must be a new development; when I lived there in 2001 the cybercafes were filled with South Asians checking out porn. You were supposed to initial a form that said you wouldn’t look at anything naughty or subversive. I used sign the names of less popular 19th century US presidents. It was a hilariously failed honor system.
Some of my Qatari students had porn cell phone screen savers.
I’m assuming you’re in Q-land for a military purpose? Could it be blocked on your end?
Slight hijack: In general it’s easier to buy uncensored music CDs at chain stores like Carrefour, buy condoms at a grug or department store (no ridiculous plexiglass lockers) and much much easier for under-21s to get served in bars in Qatar than in the US. Oh the irony.
Am I right in thinking that China only has a small (even single-figure) number of actual connections between the internet as a whole and the domestic system? This is what makes it easy to block any site deemed inappropriate, even at very short notice in the case of unfavourable news stories.