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NTRA appeals court ruling to block pornographic websites The governmental authority said it does not support their existence but cited technical difficulties
The National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA) filed an appeal against a court ruling that obliges the government to block pornographic websites. The appeal report stated that the authority, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's executive arm, is interested in preserving the "public morals of the Egyptian society and doesn't support the existence of pornographic websites on the internet". However, the authority said that there are technical and legal aspects that the court ruling ignored. The NTRA, according to the law, is not entitled to register, monitor, block, shut down or suspend websites. A source at the authority said that, according to the court ruling, the authority is expected to execute a technically-impossible mission given the fact that the websites required to be blocked are registered outside Egypt. The court ruling, issued in May by the Administrative Judiciary court, is not the first of its kind, as similar rulings were issued by the same court in 2009 and 2012 and both were eventually discarded. Digital security expert Ramy Raoof told Daily News Egypt previously that blocking Internet content is both costly and very hard to implement. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology claimed in 2012 that a ban on pornography was completely unfeasible, saying: "The issue of blocking pornography is a global issue and very complex, and the process of blocking it requires a full inventory of the names of those sites, which are estimated in the millions."
