freedom of expression?

[Nullius In Verba Skeptic]

Pakistan court orders blocking of Facebook
Press Trust Of India

Lahore: A Pakistani court ordered authorities to temporarily block social networking website Facebook following a controversy over a competition on blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Mohammad on the site.

Justice Ijaz Choudhry of the Lahore High Court issued the order in response to a petition filed by the Islamic Lawyers Movement seeking a ban on Facebook.

The court ordered authorities to block the website till May 31. It also directed the Foreign Ministry to raise the issue of the blasphemous caricatures at the international level.

The judge directed the foreign secretary to register a protest with the concerned countries. The court also sought a response from the Pakistan telecommunication authority on the issue.

Chaudhry Zulfikar, the lawyer who filed the petition on behalf of the Islamic Lawyers Forum, said that a competition on the caricatures was announced on Facebook on April 20 and it would continue till May 20 next.

Members of the website were invited to draw caricatures of the Prophet and participate in the competition, he said.

Zulfiqar said Article 2A of the constitution bars any practice against Islam in the country.

Websites having various features against the injunctions of Islam have already been banned in several Islamic countries, he said.

The PTA has already blocked several blasphemous and contemptuous websites but is reluctant to act against Facebook, Zulfiqar contended.

[siddharth]

Blocking anything online never works. Internet filters are easy to crack. All "blasphemous" work will remain on and outside facebook even after the ban is lifted.

[palaeo]

I love the internet!!! And I love how people think they can censor it. What is the point really? There are probably 10% of people who are actually aware of the whole controversy BECAUSE of the internet. And the 90% who don't know, will try to open Facebook unsuccessfully and say "WTF?". They they will find out from the 10% who DO know. And then after the site is unblocked everyone will be on it like little girls at a Justin Beiber concert. That is kind of a FAIL at censorship.

[Lije]

(19-May-2010, 11:13 PM)palaeo Wrote: I love the internet!!! And I love how people think they can censor it.

There is a very old saying on the Internet - "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." (It is an inside joke on computer networks where if a node goes down, traffic is routed through surrounding nodes.)

[Varun]

Although very difficult, China has done a pretty good job on this front, their technical expertise on this must be very good.
It isn't fool proof of course but the numbers getting through the Great Firewall are really insignificant considering the total number.

Muslim countries (with some others) recently passed a UN resolution which makes blasphemy illegal, its non binding (i don't know who should we thank for that, "thank god" just seems over used)

Internet is the last bastion of true freedom left in the world, and i just hope it stays that way.