In what may be the last great battle in a fight for gay rights that has lasted more than two decades, a five-member bench headed by India’s chief justice, Dipak Misra, appointed just last August, is challenging the constitutionality of Section 377, the British-era law that bans sexual activities “against the order of nature,” including homosexual activities. "To censors, this is an important distinction.Five years after the Indian Supreme Court decided that an archaic piece of colonial law meant gay sex was illegal in India, the judicial system has a chance to set things right. "Because a piece of news appears on the Internet, the newspaper is able to say, 'I am not publishing this news, I am not breaking this story, I am only republishing it,'" El Khoury said. Arabic papers are gaining more freedom, bit by bit. News like that from the outside world - El Sokkari works in London - changes the way people in the Arab world have access to information, not just directly, but indirectly. "I do not agree that you have to help the housewife to get a bar of soap or whatever she wants," said Hosam El Sokkari, head of BBCArabic, which provides original Arabic-language news reporting on its site. Haddad was arguing for that as a major advance. Some of that traffic will be devoted to such mundane matters as e-commerce for basic household necessities. But ongoing trends are likely to lend growing weight to the argument against this position.Īccording to Wissam El Solh, CEO of Netakeoff in Beirut, Lebanon, Internet penetration among the 280 million people in the Arab world will increase from 2 million users last year to 3.5 million this year to more than 30 million in 2005. Haddad was arguing the point that some government control of content is not necessarily a bad thing. "The Arab person in general looks for curiosity and entertainment on the Internet." "Knowledge is not owned by anybody," said Anas Haddad, content manager of Saudia Arabia-based, during the panel discussion. They teach each other ways to reach certain sites." So people living in these countries become amateur hackers. "Some proxies are advanced and powerful enough to block your searches. "Here in the United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia and in Syria, there are government-controlled proxies that block traffic and filter it. "We have to ask ourselves: Should government be allowed to censor the Internet?" he said. It gets people thinking about the larger world out there. "For more information on Emirates Internet services, click here."Įl Khoury and others who favor political and cultural liberalization in the Arab world see the lure of the sex sites as a good thing. "Emirates Internet denies access to this site," the page reads.
A message pops up on the screen announcing that the site in question is on the "Emirates Internet Control List." The screen shows what looks like a large diamond-shaped stop sign reading, "Blocked site," flashing in English and Arabic. The United Arab Emirates, like many other countries in the Arab world, block users from accessing such content - or at least try.įor example, if a visitor at the Abu Dhabi Hilton types in he encounters a stop sign.