Ban the Internet

[ravage]

@Iconoclast

Have we seen the ruling and the reasons mentioned by the court for it?

Im not the one making the claim that ‘this is why it was banned’. Nevertheless we can glean the reasons based on this:

That order followed an injunction by a Pakistani court, which agreed Wednesday with a petition by an Islamic lawyers’ group that the page violated Islamic laws banning the prophet’s image.

A spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said the decision to block YouTube came after government monitors found that references to the Facebook page – called “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” – were growing on the video-sharing site, as were other “derogatory” references to Islam, the majority religion in Pakistan.

“We are an Islamic republic, so we are monitoring the Muslim content,” said Khurran Mehran, the spokesman. “We had to shut it down.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052002023.html

Note no references to objections to policy or references to their policy wrt racial insults.

Again wikpedia is not banned except for few pages, as mentioned by firenze and youtube is also OPEN now.

wonderful. google was open too. thank God for small victories.

In the end we all speak of our opinions here, i have stated that its okay to blcok FB for its hy[pocritical policies on free speech and double standards, though, i would have liked Pakistan not jumping into this row. Are you against the ban bcoz it has to be all or none? Or you support people putting up anuthing on the web they wish to, regardless of its nature.

I am against the ban for a whole number of reasons.

I am against it because where it is possible for people to avoid offensive content by not visiting a given webpage/website the courts should not need to ban it.

I am against it because this measure above all else has ensured that the draw Muhammad day got massive publicity, and we’ve all but ensured that this is an annual feature instead of an unsuccessful, ignored attempt at provocation.

I am against it because of the pathetic reasons given for banning it, and the precedence those set. This precendence ensures that the courts can basically ban anything that can be called offensive.

I am against it because of the lack of specificity. It would have been reasonable, as the PTA argued, to block the specific group on facebook that was conducting the competition. Instead the court ordered the whole site banned, a measure of astounding stupidity.