Orkut Banned in UAE

Looks like it’s not just YouTube that has the dubious honor of being banned in various countries around the world. Orkut joins the club now too, and the first one to ban it is the U.A.E {United Arab Emirates}.

Apparently the Telecom Regulatory Authority {TRA} decided that some of the content was not suitable for the U.A.E in general.

“We have received complaints from a newspaper and some individuals saying that objectionable material, including pornographic content, were posted on the site. We checked the site and found out that there were a few things which cannot be allowed in the UAE,” TRA spokesperson said.

An Etisalat official said, “Orkut was blocked following instructions from TRA.” Of course this has come with outrage from users of the site in the U.A.E who use it to connect to friends from around the world. Some of them said it’s like “burning the house to kill a rat”. Etisalat is the sole provider of Internet access in the U.A.E.

This is really unfortunate when people who have nothing to do with the content on social sites have to suffer at the hands of their Internet provider because someone posted objectionable content. I’ve lived in a Middle East country while growing up and saw my first glimpse of the Internet from there. Yes there were “certain” sites that could not be accessed, which is fine if they want to maintain morality and stuff, but policing the Internet has never been a long term solution.

Some other sites banned in the U.A.E -

Boing Boing.net

Skype

Flickr - not 100% sure about this.

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Story source.

Update: Hello readers from the U.A.E, below are a few possible ways that might work to get into Orkut.

1. Use Google’s translate function.
2. A huge list of proxy sites that might work.

No guarantees are given of any of them actually working.

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