Update: It’s been confirmed that Youtube is being blocked by all Tunisian ISPs since November 2nd, 2007.
Several Tunisian bloggers are reporting today not being able to access the popular video-sharing site Youtube. One Tunisian blogger who has done a traceroute from Tunisia to check the block has sent us this screenshot:
If it turns out to be true, Youtube will be the second video sharing site blocked by Tunisia. Since September 3rd, 2007, Tunisia is still blocking access to Dailymotion.
Share this article:
[...] des sites web 2.0 en particulier (Youtube, Google Earth, Livejournal). Hier, mon ami Stupeur m’a appris la nouvelle de la censure de Youtube. Avec ça, la Tunisie devient le seul pays au monde à [...]
posted on November 3rd, 2007 at 8:27 pm - #4032affirmatif.. it’s blocked
posted on November 4th, 2007 at 5:16 pm - #4068thx for who help us to contourn censorship
posted on November 4th, 2007 at 5:32 pm - #4069just use the ip address - it’s still available
posted on November 6th, 2007 at 11:10 pm - #4156thx but can u tell me the ip of dailymotion?
posted on November 7th, 2007 at 7:00 pm - #4195Indeed, no way to get to Youtube…
posted on November 8th, 2007 at 1:59 pm - #4227Dailymotion IP is http://195.8.214.140
but it seems that they are redirecting to the DNS.
You can use this site to convert Host/Domain Name to IP Address and vice versa
http://www.hcidata.co.uk/host2ip.htm
posted on November 8th, 2007 at 2:07 pm - #4230[...] 過去半年內，中國、突尼西亞、敍利亞、土耳其、緬甸、泰國與摩洛哥政府切斷了影片分享網站的連結，在9月3日到11月2日之間，突尼西亞政府封鎖了二個受歡迎影片分享網站–Dailymotion、Youtube, 使國內網友無法觀賞或上傳影片，目前這二個網站在當地仍無法造訪。中國網友最近可以重新使用Flickr 相片分享網，但在阿拉伯聯合大公國、伊朗境內仍無法連上。Metacafe、Photobucket 在許多中東國家被禁止，例如伊朗和阿聯。 [...]
posted on November 29th, 2007 at 4:13 am - #5205Umm - where exactly do you see in the traceroute example above any block?
What CAN be seen is the weak tier into the tunisian backbone (lag!), probably the access concentrator construction (which seems to have not improved in the last 2 years) and the pityful connectivity of Tunisia to the European/American internet (lag!!!). In this example here the route runs from Tunisia through Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Holland to Washington. Before, Tunisia routed the complete traffic directly via a provider in the UK, which was slow and showed all the time big packet losses - when I look at the actual routing now, I see, however, no improvement whatsoever with this solution.
The astericks around the intercontinental jump just show that the provider has switched off ICMP (eg. PING) responses, but that is not too uncommon. The final destination, youtube at 208.65.xxxx replies and demonstrates that it is working and responsive - in this regard, the above traceroute shows the exact opposite of what it was supposed to show .
IF the website was böocked, the traceroute would not even have shown one response, because the tunisian method of blocking a website is by its nameserver translation and by its IP address, each IP request is as well inspected as each nameserver request (unless they have changed that in the last few weeks), so it will bring up from the nameserver side something like “page not found” and from the IP side something like “no route to host”.
posted on January 7th, 2008 at 9:54 am - #6747You’re absolutely right Wolph,
I was also wondering when I saw the tracert. But this does not change the fact that on that same day, Youtube was blocked by all tunisian ISP. I don’t really know how is that possible. I was chatting with the Tunisian friend who sent me the screenshot and with other, the result is the same: the traceroute is showing response, but the site is blocked!
Thanks for this detailed information.
posted on January 7th, 2008 at 1:31 pm - #6760Hi
In fact all the isp in tunisia get their traffic from the ATI (tunisia internet agency) and the censorship is made by a commercial US company just before it’s sent to the ATI this is how everything is blocked . if You make a gprs connction with a foreign ISP the site will work.
Sad truth ….
posted on January 16th, 2008 at 8:29 pm - #7263YouTube was still accessible here in Tunisia if you entered from the UK site. However, it seems that the Tunisian government has caught on to this and has now blocked access to YouTube from all international sites as well. This latest development happened on 18 February 2008.
posted on February 22nd, 2008 at 2:07 pm - #8559I found that there are still two YouTube sites available in Tunisia. Here they are:
http://ru.youtube.com/
http://tw.youtube.com/
This is at least as of 19:17 (local Tunisian time) on 22 February 2008
posted on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 pm - #8568Does anyone know WHY Tunisia blocked YouTube? And does anyone know if the block is temporary or permanent?
posted on February 27th, 2008 at 12:17 pm - #8719[...] des sites web 2.0 en particulier (Youtube, Google Earth, Livejournal). Hier, mon ami Stupeur m’a appris la nouvelle de la censure de Youtube. Avec ça, la Tunisie devient le seul pays au monde à [...]
posted on March 7th, 2008 at 2:09 am - #8751I also noticed this when i was visiting Tunis late March 2008, I couldnt access youtube. I had to VPN back to my coporate network (out of Tunis) then use youtube. I also tried to use a free proxy it was not suprise that they are blocked too.
posted on March 17th, 2008 at 10:27 am - #8836Many thanks TunB…ru website is still available
posted on March 25th, 2008 at 9:11 am - #8926THIS IS SPARTTTTTTAAAAAAAAA….
Rapidshare is blocked too ?
why ? we dont know !
they close websites without asking or annocing that !!!!!
posted on April 27th, 2008 at 10:52 pm - #9291where is liberty