Things are going to get a lot more complicated as multimedia messaging
starts to become ubiquitous in the Muslim world, and adult contents
start to flood the marketplace.
There is no reason why even today a user couldn't be sent or download
adult contents, even with SonyEricsson's tiny screen, 256 colours, and
images restricted to >2K. European 3G operators are expecting adult
contents to become a huge part of service revenues as it seems to be the
only thing westerners are willing to pay for on the internet...
I can't see how the Saudi GSM network will be able to restrict that sort
of activity long-term...
Dan Bauer, Quartez Ltd.
Twickenham, Middlesex, TW12AA U.K.
* Get the message *
dan@quartez.com
-----Original Message-----
From: keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net
[mailto:keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net] On Behalf Of Benjamin
Sent: 03 July 2002 07:04
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: sha mail in Saudi Arabia
On Wednesday, July 3, 2002, at 02:31 , Paul Hardy wrote:
>> Well, there is a low tech and a hi tech solution to this problem ...
>
> There's also the unasked question: if these camera phones are in
places
> where men are not allowed, who's pushing the shutter button?
Again, I can offer two solutions ...
- a wolf in a sheep's clothes
- a sheep in a wolf's clothes
;-)
It could be very dangerous though for a man to enter any place which is
off limits for males.
Anyway, AFAIK Saudi Telecom is owned by the Saudi Royal family and they
do have a tight regime on "un-islamic" stuff. So, it doesn't require any
legislation or regulation to outlaw those phones. If there is any sign
of ultra-orthodox clerics taking advantage of this phenomenon, Saudi
Telekom will -without any rule of law assisting- just shut off all the
camera phones in a blip (other than those known to be owned by the Royal
family of course).
A friend of mine worked on a project in Saudi and boy he had some weird
stories to tell.
On the other hand, I was working on a project for one of the Egyptian
mobile operators and they had some interesting services there, like
special prayer reminder SMS five times a day. At one time we were
working on an idea to build a service which would upon request send back
an SMS with instructions how to figure out in wich direction Mecca is.
Apparently, they do sell GPS based devices which show you the way to
Mecca and they even come in a luxury 12 carat gold plated case. Also
interesting, on every PC in the building you could see the screen savers
having popped up with a message: "Prayer Time" and you would wonder
where everybody had gone ...
rgds
benjamin
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Received on Wed Jul 3 16:19:31 2002