Posted @ whirlpool - ILCF pt15

Thought some might find this interesting re: Internet control in the UAE. From wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai

SOQ
"Etisalat, the government owned telecommunications provider, held a virtual monopoly over telecommunication services in Dubai prior to the establishment of other, smaller telecommunications companies such as Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC — better known as Du) in 2006. Internet was introduced into the UAE (and therefore Dubai) in 1995. The current network is supported by a bandwidth of 6 GB, with 50,000 dialup and 150,000 broadband ports. Dubai houses two of four DNS data centers in the country (DXBNIC1, DXBNIC2)[90]. Internet content is regulated in Dubai. Etisalat uses a proxy server to filter internet content that is deemed to be inconsistent with the values of the country, that provides information on bypassing the proxy, dating, gay and lesbian networks, sites pertaining to the Bahá'í faith, and sites originating from Israel. Additionally, VoIP services such as Skype that challenge Etisalat's monopoly over international calling as well as multimedia sharing and social networking websites such as Flickr, Lastfm, Hi5 and Orkut are blocked"EOQ

The entry seems a bit hay-wire the positioning of the phrase "that provides information on bypassing the proxy" mind you ...

Either way, it seems that the proxy server is far from dead.

regarDS