Authorities here claim they're winning the war on Net porn, with the director of the state organization which monitors Saudi Web traffic saying his unit succeeds in blocking all major Net porn sites.
Saudi Arabia has an estimated thirty Internet service providers, all linked to "a central node" in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the BBC said, a node which controls access to the Internet. They have no censorship expert teams, the BBC continued, only technicians - including some from Finland, who run filter programs brought in from out of Saudi Arabia. Hoymany said Saudi culture means that Saudi people want to be certain they won't be offended when they surf the Net. But Dr. Fahad a-Hoymany told the British Broadcasting Company it is still hard to keep up when new sites show up almost every hour.
And porn isn't the only target of Saudi authorities trying to control Net content - they block any sites they believe could stir up religious hatred, the BBC said, not to mention sites giving tips on building your own bombs.
Does it mean the authorities are totally successful? Not quite - those Saudis who can afford international phone bills can make a simple dialup call to an ISP outside the country and outmaneuver the kingdom.
This is all pretty new to Saudi Arabia, which has only been on the Internet for less than eighteen months, with authorities now trying to tackle e-commerce, which has no legal Saudi framework or banking apparatus. By comparison, two neighboring Arab states, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, are promoting e-commerce briskly, the BBC said.
