Etisalat has blocked access to the Corbis website in the UAE, one of the world’s largest picture libraries.
The resource of stock film and photography footage comprising more than a 100 million images, is privately owned by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and is a vital art-buying tool for the region’s ad agencies and publishing industry.
It is not known why Corbis has suddenly fallen foul of Etisalat’s censorship guidelines, having been freely available without restriction for several years, though sources say the company is currently in talks with the telco giant to get its site unblocked.
The latest incident adds to an upsurge in criticism of Etisalat’s policies.
In July the company rendered the UAE’s Blackberry devices inoperable for several days after sending them a battery sapping ‘performance enhancement patch’.
The patch was revealed to be spyware potentially allowing Etisalat access to texts and emails sent by customers.
I think Etisalat is just screwed up like STC in Saudi, they don’t know what’s going on but they’re doing everything. (No offense, that’s just my opinion, things are not in their control these days..)
Not that I agree with this situation or anything, I think stock is great (when it is used properly) so “don’t look for the problem in every opportunity, instead look at the opportunity in every problem”, perhaps this is an opportunity for photographers, models and agencies to get more business and creative ideas as agencies become a little less reliant on stock and more on developing ideas that work locally.
There are some useful examples of bad use of stock on BlogAnubis to back up the point and there are many other stock libraries also listed on the same blog as alternatives to Corbis although some would argue that they are not as good.
you can easily get the answer to why they have blocked the site. As TRA ordered both etisalat and du to explain why sites have been blocked. So direct your question to etisalat and they HAVE to answer.