The fake “404” error message received today when trying to access Dailymotion.
Dailymotion [1], France's YouTube-like video sharing site has been blocked [2], again [3], in Tunisia. Still unclear [4] if the government-controlled body, ATI [5] (Agence Tunisienne d’Internet), throw whom all Tunisia’s ISPs are operating [6], has imposed the ban [7].
On April 1st, 2007, Dailymotion was blocked in Tunisia for almost a week. Citizen Lab’s technical research director, Nart Villeneuve who has been following the case [8] concluded that dailymotion is most likely blocked because it has been categorized by SmartFilter [9] – the filtering software produced by Secure Computing [10], a US-based company andused by Tunisia- as pornography [11]: “It was blocked because SmartFilter categorized the web site as pornography, and, since Tunisia blocks the pornography category the web site was blocked. Some time between April 4, 2007 and April 9, 2007 SmartFilter removed dailymotion.com from the pornography category.”
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned [12] the Tunisian authorities’ blocking of access to Dailymotion. “The blocking of the www.dailymotion.com site may have been prompted by the posting of a number of videos on the political situation in Tunisia” said the organization in its statement issued on April 3, 2007.
On April 6th, 2007, following the ban on Dailymotion, Tunisian bloggers and activists have launched [13] the “Unblock Dailymotion [14]” campaign “in order to highlight the unfair ban and to draw the public attention to the aggressive censorship prevailing in the country.”
[14]