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Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Etisalat: Orkut.com banned in the UAE

Controversial website Orkut.com has been blocked in the UAE after Gulf News highlighted the concerns of readers that it contains sexually explicit material.

Etisalat banned the site yesterday on the orders of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA).

As reported in Gulf News in recent days, some wanted Orkut banned because they feared people were using the site to find sexual partners.

“After the TRA was contacted by Gulf News, they went into this site and found out that it should be blocked,” an official TRA spokesman told Gulf News.

“Immediately they issued a formal letter to the Internet Service Providers in the UAE to block this site.” The letter was sent to Etisalat, the UAE’s main Internet Service Provider, by the TRA’s Director of Technical Affairs, Mohammad Geyath.

Orkut had been blocked before in the UAE, and was later unblocked after many users complained. The TRA spokesman said the TRA had never ordered that unblocking… SOURCE

I am sometimes amazed at how myopic people can be (UAE, or

anywhere). You will have people complaining about sites like Orkut,

but they will never look outside their own backdoor at the exploited

workers, or the sextrade going on in the city below.

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