Qtel censors ares destroying my art career

alma wad
By alma wad

 I became so hopeless . The other day I wanted to visit my online gallery on the art.com - and I found it was blocked by Qtel censors. This is already my second gallery which has been blocked so far ,. the other is a less visited one .

I had been  so happy before to be able to have my own art gallery on the art.com -which seems to me  the biggest  poster sender site  . 

Now it is finished. I do not paint anything which would offend the qatari values .there might be  some other member artist s galleries with nudity   -why do not they block only those ones ? And most of the art.com is not about nudity at all .

there is so much rubbish they do not block -why do they have to do it with art-sites? 

Now where to go ? Where to open a gallery ? One day I open next day they mght block it. 

Anybody ?Any ideas ?

 thank you : alma wad 

 

By alma wad• 30 Oct 2006 13:35
alma wad

I am afraid you are right . In theory I like the idea of filtering porno sites and such things - but in practice they filter blindly without consideration of the usefulness of the site or without considering blocking partly only some sites.

And for some cases there is simply no explanation . Why did they have to block the pizza restaurant site- in a little town in Hungary ? it is a mystery for me

By alma wad• 30 Oct 2006 13:30
alma wad

thank you for the information about art galleries- and all . 100 rial is really not a big sum for one year .

I hope that i will manage all this somehow . After all my existing gallery in art.com is not closed- only I can not see it anymore- and I can not add new pictures .At least not from here .

By Terramax• 30 Oct 2006 12:37
Rating: 4/5
Terramax

Qtel actually doesn't even look at what they block. Instead they subscribe to third-party blacklists and apply them.

Mind you... even site which shows you exact time in Sao Paulo, Brazil is blocked.

By vic• 29 Oct 2006 21:11
vic

sorry for the double post. I thought the first one did not get through because an error message popped up.

By vic• 29 Oct 2006 21:07
Rating: 3/5
vic

You are right ArtsCad is a bit slow but while art.com is unavailable, it could be a good alternative.

I only pay QR100 annually for a 100MB website with a monthly bandwidth of 2 GB. There is no need to advertise. You can submit your site to different search engines to be more accessible to surfers.

Given the amount of traffic in your original gallery, you have indeed lost a lot. I hope you could somehow restore things back. Good luck.

By vic• 29 Oct 2006 21:01
Rating: 4/5
vic

You are right, ArtsCad is a bit slow, but while art.com is unavailable, it could be a good alternative. I use it only to increase my presence in the web.

I only pay QR100 annually for a 100 MB site with 2 GB bandwidth. Other web hosts charge even cheaper. There's no need to advertise. You can submit your site to different search engines to be more accessible to surfers.

Maybe, you can engrave a Copyright icon in each of the images of your works but it's not a guarantee against theft. I think, once something is in the web, it is practically a communal property.

Given the amount of traffic you had in your gallery, you indeed have lost a lot. I wish something could be done somehow to restore everything. Good luck.

By bigboi• 29 Oct 2006 15:32
bigboi

As soon as QTel gets a word of this site (http://www.hotspotvpn.com/) I GUARANTEE they're gonna block it.

By alma wad• 29 Oct 2006 15:09
alma wad

I am afraid that it just will make matter worse . You know this is my second gallery - which they blocked .

Besides -last month to my greatest shock I found the hompage of our little towns pizza restaurant blocked as well . When I suffer from homesickness I visit that site. I do not think that anybody else besides me ever visited tha site here in qatar .How did they find it ? Why did they block it ?

I find no answer .

By alma wad• 29 Oct 2006 15:01
alma wad

have you got any system in your gallery protecting pictures from theft ?

By alma wad• 29 Oct 2006 14:59
alma wad

Thank you for your advice . In fact I have already started a gallery on Artscad-but I was discouraged by the site slowness and that i could not find any information about the owners of the site in the"about us " section ".

How much can be the cost of having my own website ? Do you also spend money on advertising?

You know the good thing about art.com was- that it has 5 million visitors each month -and my gallery got a fare share of that without having to pay for anything .

By anonymous• 29 Oct 2006 10:49
anonymous

Or you could post your art into our gallery

By Thor• 29 Oct 2006 10:44
Rating: 5/5
Thor

if you are not worried about locals viewing and you want to simply share your art with the rest of the world then I suggest going to www.hotspotvpn.com. There you can purchase VPN service which will allow you to tunnel through all of Qatar's filtering so you can post it.

By vic• 29 Oct 2006 09:40
vic

try http://artscad.com

or you can just blog your artworks like what I did with some of mine http://essenceofart.blogspot.com

or consider having your own website and domain so you can control the contents

By andyscrabble• 29 Oct 2006 08:21
andyscrabble

You can contact QTel and give them the web address of your art pages, I think. They may reconsider.

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