Qtel said last year the blocked sites fall into three categories: pornography, political criticism of Gulf countries and anti-Islamic sites.
Some overblocking occurs, where an entire website is blocked because of a few pornographic pages or because they hosted adverts for dating sites. There have also been examples of blocks that didn't fall into the three categories. Last year, a page on QL was blocked that contained a discussion about censorship of images of pigs in a children's book. Eventually, the block was removed. A site competing against the Qatar tourism authority was blocked last year.
Last summer, I looked at the top 500 sites, worldwide, and tried to work out why some of them had been blocked. The main reason was pornography, with others being blocked that explained how to circumvent the Qtel filter. None were blocked for criticism of Islam or Gulf countries.
idomeje,
Qtel said last year the blocked sites fall into three categories: pornography, political criticism of Gulf countries and anti-Islamic sites.
Some overblocking occurs, where an entire website is blocked because of a few pornographic pages or because they hosted adverts for dating sites. There have also been examples of blocks that didn't fall into the three categories. Last year, a page on QL was blocked that contained a discussion about censorship of images of pigs in a children's book. Eventually, the block was removed. A site competing against the Qatar tourism authority was blocked last year.
Last summer, I looked at the top 500 sites, worldwide, and tried to work out why some of them had been blocked. The main reason was pornography, with others being blocked that explained how to circumvent the Qtel filter. None were blocked for criticism of Islam or Gulf countries.
--nigel