Picking up from Alexander’s post. Youtube will probably get banned soon in the UAE, no more jizzing in the pants, you've been warned.
Lt Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai Police Chief, was addressing the assembly of Juvenile Education and Care association, when he said that some of YouTube content sparks dissent. The media took that as a cue that the video-sharing website might get banned. I am not so sure that will be the case.
If the Juvenile Care association is still as I remember (from couple of articles few years ago), then their recommendations are not at all obligatory to the executive leaders of Dubai. Dignitaries, senior citizens and businessmen meet in a Majlis-like forum, and they discuss the status quo of juveniles and the problems they face in their education and social life. Couple of years ago they recommended (rightly, in my opinion) banning the silly songs-request-SMS-stupid-flirting- sleaze-promotion TV channels. What happened? The channels proliferated exponentially. (Sounds like Haifa Wahebe’s breasts and half-moon ass aren’t as arousing as youtube videos, but I digress.)
There comes the inevitable question, is youtube totally ‘safe’? Of course not, and I wholeheartedly support censorship on some of its content. Especially the kind of hate inciting content. You might choose to believe otherwise, but WE DO NOT have democracy and total freedom of expression in the Arab World. We have a vicious Sunni-Shia sectarian strife. We have an intimidating rate of illiteracy. We have an intimidating rate of credulity. The stable and relatively prosperous Arab societies are stable because there are measures that ENSURE everything stays stable. Even when stability sometimes borders on stagnation….. in short, I am not worried about moral disintegration of societies, I am worried about strives and rifts. So for the time being, some of the content, in my opinion, may have to be censored.
Having said that, and with all due respect to Lieutenant General Dhahi, he is a law enforcement officer, he sees the darker side of town every day; murders, riots, drug smuggling...the whole nine yards. He might have come across crimes that were, for the sake of argument, inspired by youtube. But that’s not the grand picture is it? the society, any society as a whole, needs interactive media websites because the benefits outweighs the damages by many folds. Youtube isn’t only about dissent and defamation, it’s also about education, interaction, dialogue and understanding. So a total ban on the website is not the answer.
What y’all guys think?
9 comments:
how exactly does youtube cause 'dissent'?
i don't understand why everyone focuses on the bad part of networking and then ban them all for the sake of 'good'.
if that's the case, why not ban telephones and the internet? and mobile phones? i'm sure everyone uses them only for flirting, dating, fornicating and porn.
MJ,
I agree with you. And in fact, in an ideal world, dissent is not always a bad thing.
Actually, I should seek the original speech of L.G. Dhahi in Arabic, something might have slipped through the seams in translation.
I thought they already ban anything that needs age verification.
It's almost similar to when they banned deviantART several times then unbanned it.
I am sure they have other things to worry about. The more content is censored, the more is the desire to reach that content, don't you think?
I understand it from the point of protecting juveniles, but these juveniles are more probably youtubing music videos than a controversial documentary.
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Regardless of the website being good or bad, dangerous to the national security or not, it is always a stupid idea to ban any source of information for the simple fact that there are always numerous ways to get it. In Syria youtube,facebook and blogger.com were banned and are still banned.Yet, not just me, but also most Syrians can so easily break the ridiculous ban. Instead of wasting time and effort on banning websites they should better invest in highly entertaining and at the same time educating websites that can grab the public attention and be more powerfull than those they want to ban.
March 10, 2009 8:49 PM
I really think that any form of censorship is sad. While I might not agree with what people decide to read/watch/whatever, I fully support each individual's "right" (in America, we call it a right, even though we also censor things) to read/watch/whatever anything they damned well please. Contrasting and opposing opinions make the world a more interesting place; if we take away access to things that diverge from what we personally believe (or agree to believe as large cultures), people are stripped of their ability to develop their own sense of self and individuality. That is something I can never support, even in instances when it works out in my favour.
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