BAHAWALPUR: The Lahore High Court has directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to immediately block nine websites for publishing and promoting sacrilegious material, and ordered the PTA chairman to appear in the court on June 28, 2010 along with all relevant material.
Justice Mazher Iqbal Sidhu of the LHC Bahawalpur Bench, while hearing a write petition on Tuesday, ordered blocking of nine websites including Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, Google, Islam Exposed, In The Name Of Allah, Amazon and Bing.
A citizen, Muhammad Sidiq, filed a writ petition No. 3246/2010 in the LHC, seeking a ban on the websites for publishing blasphemous materials and twisting the facts and figure of Holy Quran. Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Hussain Azad also endorsed the viewpoint of the petitioner and demanded blocking of these websites.
Counsel for the petitioner, Latif-ur-Rehman Advocate presented CDs and other evidence in the court, showing that the said websites were publishing sacrilegious material. Later, President High Court Bar Aslam Dhakkar said the court has given a historic decision. He said the legal fraternity would observe a complete strike in Bahawalpur on Wednesday (today) against publication of such material by these websites. He said a meeting would also discuss the situation today.
Re: LHC orders blocking of Google, Yahoo, 7 other sites
**Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, Google, Amazon and Bing. **
are these people (the judges, those filing such BS petitions, and all those supporting them) still living in pre 80’s era? Do they have any basic knowledge of computers, internet, ecommerce etc.?
A blast from the past, pervez Musharraf zinda bad...
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Musharraf's inquisiition: Why youtube was banned in Pakistan
** Posted on February 24th, 2008
Read 18,492 times. The telecommunication authorities are claiming in Pakistan that YouTube was blocked for featuring allegedly blasphemous documentaries. While this move if triggered by this motive is as foolish as burning an entire library just because on a page of one of the books someone has scribbled a couple of words against you, it is far from truth. Actually Musharraf is a very self centered and insecure man these days and has recently learned from his sycophants that YouTube carries many videos critical of his government especially his torture on lawyers and political captives and since during this campaign technology played critical role in influencing people he wants to block out every kind of criticism. Again many citizens have reportedly uploaded video clips showing rigging under process in the constituencies where his allies either won or managed to dilute the verdict. There is distant though connected evidence why this must be true.
The day when the government decided to block YouTube two things happened. First AAJ TV brought back on air two of its anchors banned by Musharraf. The channel was immediately blocked by the satellite operator. The crime of the two anchors (Nusrat Javed and Mushtaq Minhas) was only to doubt Musharraf’s previous claims thinking out loud on television. Musharraf’s this ban has affected many of Pakistan’s leading anchors and opinion leaders of which I am aware of Dr Shahid Masood, Hamid Mir, Asma Sherazi and Kashif Abbasi apart from the above two.
The second thing that happened was the airing of an investigative report by Geo television which showed footage of rigging in the constituencies of Musharraf loyalists made through hidden camera. This too has reportedly not gone down well with Musharraf. Since in the past the regime also tried to block google’s weblog hosting service blogger.com in the name of countering blasphemy, the ban on YouTube does not seem anything different. But Musharraf’s toadies are not happy with Pakistani blogs and cable channels too. So a similar ban may follow on these outlets too unless the west pressures him not to do so. This episode however has exposed Musharraf’s liberal credentials and committment to fighting extremism yet again.
:rolleyes:
Why not just filter the content like saudia does.
Or better than saudia.
Or use some software like http://www1.k9webprotection.com/
Its pretty good.
can't we have some kind of deal ... like say, out of 7 days, keep internet "banned" for 3 days and remaining 4 days, WAPDA and KESC can keep power off 20 out of 24 hrs. This should take care of internet getting banned unbanned every month or so. People won't have to rush to courts every now n then.
