Saudi Government blocks approximately 2,000 web sites

Internet Business News, July 31, 2002

INTERNET BUSINESS NEWS-(C)1995-2002 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

The Saudi Arabian Government has blocked Internet access to approximately 2,000 web sites, claims a researcher from Harvard Law School.

The majority of the sites that were placed on the banned list were pornographic or about religion yet there were also a number of sites about women, health, drugs and pop culture. These included such sites as the Arab American Roman Catholic Community, Islamic Cultural Library, iVillage.com, Beach Queen swimwear, Warner Brothers Records and Rolling Stone.com.

Should a Saudi Arabia resident try to access one of the restricted web sites then they will get a message telling them that the site is blacklisted and that access has been denied.

About 64,000 web sites were tested during the study.

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