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.
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.
[…] The Arabist: “YouTube blocked in Morocco” […]
Acceder aux sites censurés grâce aux serveurs proxy : Youtube- Pandora – Myspace – Wikipedia ……
Bien qu’Internet soit mondialement reconnu pour être un média libre, la censure s’y fait incontestablement une place pour divers motifs.
Ca peut être pour des raisons économiques comme pour la limitation récente du service Pandora et certaine…
maroc telecom c’est le visage de la sociéte policier marocain lah yhdi ma khla9
Well if they try to block it again just use this website to Unblock YouTube