03 November 2006

Saudi Censors

OK - I posted an entry to the blog here called A Test Post - Can I Post a Picture and posted it. I included a picture of two models of the Russian warship Poltava. It appears as though the post went through correctly and the upload of the picture worked as the link to the picture is http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/1101/1098274519422064/320/PICT2944.jpg.

However, whenever I click on what should be the image in the post I get a wonderful message from the Saudi Arabian Censors saying (in Arabic as well as English):

Access to the requested URL is not allowed!

Please, fill out the form below if you believe the requested page should not be blocked:

Form for URL unblocking request


Please, send other sites you feel should be blocked using the following form:

Blocking Request Form

Of course, I could list any sites that annoyed me and I am sure they would be blocked without checking.

I am not certain that I want to try the unblocking request yet - perhaps when it is closer to my time to leave.

More importantly, the Censors are blocking pictures posted to Blogger beta here ... but permitting access to pictures elsewhere, on other blogs hosted by other organisations. Seems that Google's influence in the Kingdom here is not as great as other American Organisations.

2 comments:

Thomo the Lost said...

It seems that in the time since my original post and today that the prohibited sites list has been updated in the servers across Saudi Arabia and photos on Blogger Beta are now OK ... or at least the photo of the ships on my blog anyway. Either that or one of the readers sent a request off to the censors.

Thomo the Lost said...

How wrong can you be?

It seems that if I use the Internet connections from the office, then the Blogger site is uncensored and the picture in the original blog post can be seen. Then if I use the Internet connection from the hotel, the pictures are censored.

That's what I love about the Internet - the inconsistency of it all :-)