Marchingontogether
TK Veteran
The country’s Ministry of Culture and Information has recently blocked access to The Pirate Bay, without providing any explanation. Aside from the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world, a number of similar portals were also censored, including Torrentz.eu, Rarbg and possibly several others. Of course, the Saudi Arabian users are already trying to find a way to circumvent the restrictions.
Actually, the censorship of the torrent portals didn’t become a great surprise to anyone. It is known that blocking The Pirate Bay has become common around the EU in recent years, and now this practice spread to Saudi Arabia as well.
Local media report that without any prior warnings or official announcements, the Saudi Arabian Ministry for Culture and Information requested that local Internet service providers block access to the torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, Torrentz.eu and Rarbg.com.
Although the reason for the blockade wasn’t officially announced, the piracy concerns seem plausible, because the move is coming from the Ministry of Culture, rather than from the Communications Commission that administers the regular filters in Saudi Arabia. In addition, you can see that the blocking notification for The Pirate Bay differs from the green notice which means that the websites are blocked in violation of the Islamic religion.
The interesting part here is that the move comes 2 months after a number of copyright holder groups urged the American government to place Saudi Arabia on its priority watch list. The entertainment industry and its outfits blamed Saudi Arabia for doing not enough to stop Internet piracy.
At the moment, the blockade is active on almost all broadband providers, except for maybe Zain, whose customers still have access to the website. Of course, this ISP does block the tracker’s porn category, but it’s an Islamic country.
Like almost anywhere in the world, The Pirate Bay was in the top 50 most visited portals in the country, so its blockade has caused quite a bit of uproar in social networks. For example, you can see the topic being currently trending on Twitter, where many users are expressing their frustration. Well, the numerous ways to bypass the blockade are known to the entire world, so Saudi Arabia can do what all other victims of censorship do.
Actually, the censorship of the torrent portals didn’t become a great surprise to anyone. It is known that blocking The Pirate Bay has become common around the EU in recent years, and now this practice spread to Saudi Arabia as well.
Local media report that without any prior warnings or official announcements, the Saudi Arabian Ministry for Culture and Information requested that local Internet service providers block access to the torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, Torrentz.eu and Rarbg.com.
Although the reason for the blockade wasn’t officially announced, the piracy concerns seem plausible, because the move is coming from the Ministry of Culture, rather than from the Communications Commission that administers the regular filters in Saudi Arabia. In addition, you can see that the blocking notification for The Pirate Bay differs from the green notice which means that the websites are blocked in violation of the Islamic religion.
The interesting part here is that the move comes 2 months after a number of copyright holder groups urged the American government to place Saudi Arabia on its priority watch list. The entertainment industry and its outfits blamed Saudi Arabia for doing not enough to stop Internet piracy.
At the moment, the blockade is active on almost all broadband providers, except for maybe Zain, whose customers still have access to the website. Of course, this ISP does block the tracker’s porn category, but it’s an Islamic country.
Like almost anywhere in the world, The Pirate Bay was in the top 50 most visited portals in the country, so its blockade has caused quite a bit of uproar in social networks. For example, you can see the topic being currently trending on Twitter, where many users are expressing their frustration. Well, the numerous ways to bypass the blockade are known to the entire world, so Saudi Arabia can do what all other victims of censorship do.