I am in Cairo for the ICANN meeting. My hotel is far away from any free internet access, so I attempted to use the ($10/day) hotel service. The first thing I did was try to access the ICANN site to check the meeting schedules. I was shocked: a page came up with the hotel logo that said, "Site blocked." Surely I had mistyped the domain. No, it was the right domain. There was a link on the message that said to find out more, click here. So I clicked, and the page displayed a the logo of Websense and said only, "This site is permanently blocked."

One of the things I will do here is co-sponsor an event, with PIR and Robert Guerra of Freedom House, on Egyptian bloggers and the way they have been censored and sometimes beaten by the government here. But I was under the impression that the Egyptians do not filter the internet, they just harass and beat up people when they say things they don't like. Maybe ONI is wrong or maybe I am just dealing with a stupid hotel: The Concorde El Salam.