YouTube blocked in Morocco
Why is YouTube blocked in Morocco? I remember seeing some nice historical archive of Hassan II on there, but nothing too compromising on King Muhammad VI. That’s the only political reason I could think of, as well the many critical videos on the Western Sahara. If YouTube is indeed being blocking by Morocco’s main ISP, the very corrupt Maroc Telecom, for political reasons there are grounds to take things further. Maroc Telecom’s main shareholder is the French mega-corporation Vivendi. Surely newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who made a big deal of supporting freedom and democracy in his victory speech, would be rather embarrassed to learn that a French company is collaborating in censorship? This is worth looking into.
Update: It’s unblocked.
Categories: Morocco, Technology.
4 Responses to “YouTube blocked in Morocco”
- 1 Pingback on May 30th, 2007 at 4:39 am
- 2 Trackback on Jun 1st, 2007 at 11:59 am
The block by Maroc Telecom is overturned now. The site is accessible to all subscribers
The protests from the moroccan blogosphere certainly did help.
Also it is worth noticing that it is only Maroc Telecom that blocks access to sites while it is actually owned by the french Vivendi (as you mentioned in your post)
But Meditel, that is owned by the royal play-company ONA, didn’t ban/block any sites so far.
Either the royals have a better understanding of free speech or Maroc Telecom is run by conservative zealots who try to please the state too eagerly.
maroc telecom c’est le visage de la sociéte policier marocain lah yhdi ma khla9