Kuwait Issues Order To Block YouTube

Bashar Abdullah writes "Kuwait Ministry of Communications have issued orders to all ISPs to block YouTube, after some offensive videos to Quran and prophet were posted there. YouTube is 15% of Kuwaiti traffic, ranked #3 on Alexa for Kuwait. Funny thing is, those videos they refer to have been removed and I can't reach them anymore."

Comments

Profit!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Submit post about Kuwait blocking youtube.
2. Misspell prophet
3. ..
4. Profit!

Re:Profit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? Really?

The mods work in mysterious ways...

Re:Profit!

[calmofthestorm]

All governments have the same reason to censor, be it US, UK, or any other country. From their perspective, when is control of information ever a bad thing?

What varies is the thing they wave around to make people swoon. Terrorism, child porn, offense to Islam, Holocaust denial, etc.

Re:Profit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well censoring offense to Islam is more of a religious thing than a government thing. When Middle Eastern governments do that they're basically doing it in order to prevent the religious elements from really running amuck (and I mean running amuck worse than the governments have already permitted in order to give the people something to distract attention from the government's policies.) When Western governments try do the same thing they claim it is to be "culturally sensitive" but it is really because they are afraid the offended folks will make good their threats to blow some shit up and kill people.

As for censoring Holocaust denial that's pretty straightforward. Tends to be done in the countries where it occurred. Those who deny the Holocaust tend to do it in order to further their own anti-Semitic ends, to make the case the the Nazis weren't so bad, and "Wouldn't it be great to go back to the good old days and finish what we started... er finish that thing we claim didn't happen but we really want to finish just the same."

Re:Profit!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You should try going against the consensus in slashdot. You might mention the fact that the founder of the islamic "religion" comitted multiple religious massacres.

You could even suggest that this probably means that islam itself is, to say the least, "not opposed" to the idea of religious massacres. You might even say that "jihad" seems to include the practice of religious massacres, both historically and contemporary (e.g. Sudan).

And of course, by any objective standard, you'd be right.

But the consensus on slashdot will be put down firmly. After all regressives (since "progressives" want to let these idiots bring back the 8th century, I refer to them as regressives)

Re:Profit!

[Grishnakh]

Perhaps you are not a native speaker of English. The word "massacre" is generally reserved for cases where one side has no ability to resist the other; the word for what occured at Khaibar, where a 1,400 to 1,800-men army of Muslims attacked a fortress occupied by about 10,000, would be "battle" or "siege". HTH.

And what justification did they have for attacking that fortress, regardless of their numerical disadvantage?

That the early Muslims fought a lot of people, no one disputes. We may argue about the justification or brutality of these battles. But to call these battles "religious massacres" is simply inaccurate.

If one group, of one religion, attacks another group of people of a different religion, that generally sounds like a "religious massacre".

So saying that religiously massacring Midianites is wrong is saying Judiasm is evil? And saying that religiously massacring Muslims is wrong means that Hinduism is evil? And saying that religiously massacring Protestants is wrong means that Catholicism is evil? And..well, choose your match-up.

Yes, yes, and yes. Unless perhaps that religion admits its followers were wrong and did great evil in their massacres.

Dangerous videos

[4D6963]

There's no such thing as dangerous ideas, only dangerous people.

hmm

[Digitus1337]

Funny thing is, those videos they refer to have been removed and I can't reach them anymore

Do you by any chance live in Kuwait?

Re:Um...

[QuantumG]

Well, to be fair, Kuwait is more about the profits than the prophet.

Joe Lieberman isn't Muslim!

[megamerican]

Joe Lieberman and his staff have been actively censoring youtube under the guise of Senate Bill 1959: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 since May. The bill hasn't passed the Senate yet, but it hasn't stopped Lieberman from pressuring google to delete any video and accounts he wants.

This video describes what is going on pretty well.

This veteran gives Lieberman a piece of his mind on the issue.

MIT has been trying to track down what videos are being taken down and why.
http://youtomb.mit.edu/

Re:Joe Lieberman isn't Muslim!

[ZosX]

Its not just Liberman. Fox and all the other media outlets have all been purging clips from youtube. Go through the last year of videos on digg from the top down and nearly half of them have been purged. I feel like there are some fairly powerful anti-subversion forces at work.

Re:Joe Lieberman isn't Muslim!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox and all the other media outlets have all been purging clips from youtube. Go through the last year of videos on digg from the top down and nearly half of them have been purged. I feel like there are some fairly powerful anti-subversion forces at work.

Funny how a lot of the video takedowns are selective.

NBC jumped right on their most recent Palin sketch where the reporter was asking about incest in the family. Video is no longer available due to copyright reasons.

Whereas the first Palin sketch "I can see Russia from my house" is still available as are a multitude of other SNL clips.

Funny how they're really concerned about copyright when they start taking flak.

AlhamduliLlah

[mapkinase]

Positive decision.

Re:Islamic Censorship strikes again

[mr100percent]

It's not islamic. Kuwait is a dictatorship. Other more Islamic countries haven't blocked youtube.

Re:Um...

[Valdrax]

Well, to be fair, Kuwait is more about the profits than the prophet.

Thank God we fought so hard to keep like minded people from under the yoke of tyranny!
USA! USA! USA!

No such thing

[DesScorp]

There's no such thing as dangerous ideas, only dangerous people.

The descendants of six million dead Jews disagree with you. The descendants of 20-60 million dead Russians and East Europeans disagree with you. So do millions of people in China, Cambodia, and Rwanda.

Some ideas stink to the core, and always end with death. Was National Socialism ever going to end any other way than it did?

Re:No such thing

[4D6963]

So it was the Nazi ideology that killed people, and not its creators? Let it be my new motto, "People don't kill people, ideas kill people".

Re:No such thing

[solafide]

Your logic reaches the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons. "Guns don't kill people: evil dictators kill people" - or in your case, ideas don't kill people, evil dictators kill people. Most ideas where one person is believed to be permanently more important result in evil dictators, and death results.

Re:No such thing

[Capsaicin]

Also : "Was National Socialism ever going to end any other way than it did?" Was National Socialism ever going anywhere without Hitler? If Hitler had died anywhere in his early years, despite the ideology being out there and all, nothing would have happened. It's not like an idea was out the box that made people want to kill other people. It always takes a leader, a great man, hence why people and not ideas are dangerous.

Yup, that's why the communist regimes in China and the Soviet Union failed with the deaths of Mao and Lenin after all. Really the examples of dictatorial regimes that survive the death of their founder is so great as to make your statments ridiculous.

Goodness wasn't the GreatMan view of history abandoned sometime in the C19th? Must ususally an historical opportunity presents itself and someone (and it could have been any number of someones) fills the place. I will conceed that in the case of Hitler we are perhaps dealing with a leader sui generis since, unlike Mussolini for instance, he did not remain a simple puppet to the interests that allowed him power. Mussolini, however, is far more typical. Facially a "great leader," in reality a captive spokesperson.

NS Germany was never going to end any otherway simply due to the bellicose nature of the regime. Had it not been so warlike, the regime would have eventually ended in economic disaster. Not because it was a state-owned economy, it wasn't, but because the regime had undermined the intellectual infrastructure of the country. You cannot continue to place party hacks into all the educational, administrative and judicial positions based merely on ideological adherence without regard to ability and hope to survive long term.

Ministry of Communications????

[BinBoy]

> Kuwait Ministry of Communications have issued orders to all ISPs to block YouTube

Anyone disobeying this order will be imprisoned by the Ministry of Freedom.

That what you get in a theocracy

[ErrorBase]

Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Segan and many others have been trying to tell everybody. Keep this in mind when going to the poll next November.

Re:That what you get in a theocracy

[Mesa MIke]

But Barack Obama's a Muslim, and he'll probably want to impose Sharia on all of us.

Re:off-topic... YouTomb

[meringuoid]

But by far the most takedowns seem to have reasonable cause. WWE SomethingOrOther Night Parts 1 through 16? Yeah, I'm sure -that's- fair use.

See, there it is though. You consider it reasonable to censor a YouTube posting because you believe information can be owned. In Kuwait they consider it reasonable to censor a YouTube posting because they believe the Prophet should not be criticised. Both to me seem rather artificial. But I suppose Americans believe it worth restricting free speech in that way in order to encourage a profitable media industry, and Kuwaitis believe it worth restricting free speech in that way to avoid infuriating God.

what ignorance you demonstrate

[Shivetya]

there is no threat of a theocracy in the US from the current candidates. Considering the church that the one candidate went to I would think the biggest threat would be on the left this year. Go figure, it is also the group desperately trying to prove their religious enough for the moderates. The only times I hear about the candidates on the right's religious views is when people mock them on message boards on from the press.