This weekend, Cairo Administrative Court issued a 30-day ban order on YouTube and all other websites that host or link to content from the anti-Islam film “The Innocence of Muslims,” which was protested worldwide after footage from the trailer was shown on Egyptian television. The court’s ruling may force the hand of the National Telecom Regulation Authority (NTRA) and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), which have refrained from pursuing such a ban themselves.
This is far from the first time that a court ruling has forced the NTRA to censor Internet content. In November 2009, an administrative court ordered a ban on all pornographic websites. The order declared that “freedom of expression and public rights should be restricted by maintaining the fundamentals of religion, morality and patriotism” and denounced pornographic content as “venomous and vile.” In November 2009, Egypt’s Prosecutor General, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud at the time, ordered [2] government ministries to enforce this ban. The NTRA responded by sending letters to all ISPs requesting that they block all pornographic content. EFF expressed concern that this could mark the beginning of a centralized filtering regime, but the NTRA rightly declined to go that route, dismissing it as costly and ineffective.
The NTRA may have less leeway in the “Innocence of Muslims” ruling. The order to block all websites that host or link content from the video may be impossible without an expensive centralized Internet censorship apparatus, but the order to block YouTube is quite straightforward.
It is unclear what the court hopes to gain by temporarily blocking access to YouTube. YouTube voluntarily blocked access [3] to the video in Libya and Egypt in mid-September, in violation of Google’s policy of only removing content if it is found to be in violation on their Terms of Service or in response to a valid court order. While many factors may have been at play, including violent protests and a reported call from the White House, EFF was deeply disappointed in the company’s failure to stand up for free speech in Egypt and Libya. To make matters worse, it appears that YouTube’s willingness to make an exception to Google’s policies and censor the video in Egypt did not go far enough for the Egyptian court. If YouTube was hoping that a little temporary censorship on a volunteer basis would save it from a nation-wide ban on their entire website, it has miscalculated badly.