The news has been rotating around the web like fire. Pakistan’s telecommunications regulator, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has instructed all Internet service providers to ban Youtube and Flicker as well (after Facebooks ban for indefinite period of time)
After a complete failed attempt to remove “sacrilegious” and blasphemous material from the two websites the Government of Pakistan thus decided to completely block the two websites.
From past couple of weeks a group had been inviting people to draw caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
The information provided on the Facebook page, which had more than 84,000 fans on Thursday, said that the aim of the page was not to slander Muslims. The objective of the site was to show extremists, some of whom threaten to harm people because of their depictions of the Prophet Mohammed that they are not afraid of them, it added. PC World
Facebook said Wednesday it was investigating the controversial page.
“While the content does not violate our terms, we do understand it may not be legal in some countries,” the company said in a statement. “In cases like this, the approach is sometimes to restrict certain content from being shown in specific countries.”
Currently PTA has blocked around 450 links on the internet containing derogatory material, including a few links from Wikipedia as well. Along with this the regulatory has welcomed the authorities at Facebook and Youtube to consult and solve the issue. They have also provided an email address where anyone can report URLs displaying obnoxious material.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
This is just a great desicion to ban fb by our High Court!! Hats Off to them! and fb must be banned permanent in Pakistan! This thing has no excuse…!!!
We cannot stop them because they are way ahead of us in every field, what we can do is to close our eyes and say that “ALL IZ WELL”. This is the ridiculous decision I ever saw in my life. We love our beloved Prophet(SAWW) and their is no compromise on this. We respect our religion but we don’t have the ability to have our religion respected.
Don’t we have intellect to defend our religion.
There are tons of social sites, blogs, vids site, If most of them, not all, start such competition which I doubt they will, will we block the whole internet.
And by the way I have heard that no Muslim country has blocked “facebook” except “Pakistan”. hmm, its means we are the only Muslims in this world.
Well this is not proper solution…well said by Mr.Faheem. will we block all internet…solution is to have same skill set so that they bother us & our Religion…Secondly…we should have some outclass hackers & develpoers who can destroy their such activity pages…
First of all the decisions is very good. We all know that facebook removed the page agains jews in just 20 minutes but when it comes to Muslims they say that its not against our terms. So I don’t know how a muslim should go to such website who’s the partner is this crime.
I think all should read this column http://bit.ly/airUUA
I do support for permanent ban of Facebook.
I would like all the commentators to read this:
http://propakistani.pk/2010/05/23/one-facebook-two-faces-one-is-real-ugly/
@Ms Razia
I would like to appreciate your thinking of having “hackers”. That is slightly off-path solution, the correct path is to educate ourselves. We need solutions those are more efficient than youtube, facebook or google. There are no limits to innovation. Any idea may work. Even if we get 100 good ideas for Pakistan/Muslims world, we will get back the glory.
Faheem & Razia.. Yes we should have outclass hackers and developers who stop or destroy such things.. But BAN WAS REQUIRED AND ACTION WAS NOT TAKEN TO CLOSE OUR EYES BUT TO SHOW GIVE THEM A GREAT LOSS (AND WE SUCCEED), LOSS BECAUSE THEY TRIED TO HURT OUR FEELINGS.. Please dont oppose the ban, most of the people liked this and are in favor of this ban. And you might have heard about FB moderators comment and apologies. He accepted flaw in his FB policies and have announced to review and change them.
Guys
If someone insulted my parents I’d be tempted to suck the blood out of them.
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is dearer to us than our parents.
If someone makes fun of him for what ever reason I’d do all that I can to destroy that ‘thing’.
If all of the Muslims unite and decide not to use any product or website that ‘supports’ such activities then I’m sure it will be a great loss of business, revenue and customer base for them.
This will ensure that no company makes a stupid decision of supporting such activities.
I support blocking of facebook. Its not closing our eyes. Its giving them a revenue and loss of customer base.
When we can’t do much more then we should do at-least what we can so I really appreciate this fb, youtube bane.
Facebook said Wednesday it was investigating the controversial page.
“While the content does not violate our terms, we do understand it may not be legal in some countries,” the company said in a statement. “In cases like this, the approach is sometimes to restrict certain content from being shown in specific countries”
This is wrong. Code Week you don’t know the policies of facebook. The page against any religion is the against the policies of facebook.
This is first step to solve these issues
Check this article
acticle
At least Pakistani Govt. done something good to show that its a Islamic country.. but on the other hand its bad for the developer section of Pakistan.. Pakistan should still ban the FB and related sites but give some way to the developers, that are working on its API’s and modules..
Salute to Muslims..
Action was required just to let the world know that we Muslim care about our religion well. And being Muslims its our duty to defend our religion and Prophet (PBUH). Its a way to tell Facebook that if they want to stay in the business they need to respect Islamic Values.
well! at least that is a solution to record our protest. Guys we all reported that page and tried our best, but fb was surely getting racial and making fun of our,
like ha ha! “look what we do, we have made posters of your Prophet”.
“and we are just making fun”,
the point is that we cannot just tolerate such malicious attack, and believe me we are tortured like that because they make sure we will be let to know what they are doing, in my view its better to shut your eyes what you cant changed, keep a ban on fb and keep my head clean.
It was a good decision as doing such things we can create pressure on FB and other sites and . It would be better if all Muslim countries banned fb. India has also banned the FB lastday.
I thnk the decision abt banning fb or youtube is wrong. Wht good v have done by banning the sites. Many users are still using it through proxy servers. In my opinion banning is not the solution. Pages are still there v are jst closing our eyes and letting them do wht they wnt to by banning the site.
Our government needs to be effective to negotiate with fb and youtube to clear that contnt. Closing the eyes is not the solution.
For better, for worse lets stand behind our government’s decision on this. I personally believe there are better ways, more effective ways, to protest – for example see this – but no other group has come up with any significant actions in this regard.
Lets not fight among ourselves and sow further division among our ranks. On this issue, our hearts and our souls firmly stand united. Lets not criticize what others have done or should have done, lets see what we have done to defend our honor and dignity.
There are many many different channels of protest, let government of Pakistan’s action be one of them. Every contribution to the cause is welcome.
I personally agree with Irfan.
see this article
http://express.com.pk/images/NP_LHE/20100522/Sub_Images/1100947110-2.gif
This may be an answer to those who say that we are free nation.
It is good to ban but it’s not a permanent solution and it’s not enough. We will have to find the root cause which thing encouraged the criminals to play with the emotions of Muslims. Why Muslims are not united at this point atleast?
The real cause which I think is that Muslims are not united and this encourages the criminals to play emotions of muslims. If all the muslims (more than 100 millions) become one unit, I think no body in the world will be able to play with emotions of muslims. Why Arab counties are sleeping at this moment? It would be more better that all the muslim counties (even only arab counties) banned such websites, then the result will be more effective.
So, the ban only in Pakistan is not enough. Here is a need of united action, and after doing this, muslims can raise their status in the world.
Yes, all we need is tobe United! and second, being IT professionals we must work harder to improve our skills in our respective fields and show them through our IT industry. Thirdly we shouldn`t be so weak that we are saying that bann is not the solution etc etc just becoz these social sites have become more dear to us!!! Remember, A drop of water makes a River ultimately! Little action counts! and I would personally request the government to permanently shut down this site, not as a solution at all, BUT JUST AS A LESSON!!!
I agree with the ban on sites. and we should also back our government. i am proud that we in our office all members deactivated our accounts on facebook.
i also agree with some of the readers, that we should enhance our skills in technology and social communication so that we can face these challenges.
I thnk the decision abt banning fb or youtube is wrong. We can not get good on banning these.
Banning is not gonna help at all.
We need to advise ideas and bring negotiable solutions.
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