Light Within: End of Blogging Era in Pakistan

End of Blogging Era in Pakistan
Sunday, 30 September 2007

While blogs on Blogspot are banned here, bloggers have been using pkblogs.com or inblogs.net to access the blogs but this morning both these sites seem to be down. Is this the end of blogging era in Pakistan? I am wondering while contemplating my options and future of blogging in this part of the world?

Update by Sidhusaaheb: After the blogging platforms like Blogger were banned for a few days, recently, in India, the article (No way you can block blogs!) by (Kiran Jonalagadda - a Bangalore based blogger) appeared in a popular Indian English daily.

Update 2 (Oct 1, 2006) by Teeth Maestro at ATP in Who is giving Pakistan a bad name?: Worry not - I have investigated the issue and it appears that this temporary outage is more like a small server issue and I have been assured that the guys (Yasir Memon and Naveed Memon) are working hard to solve this and inshallah we shall be up rocking very soon.

Take this as just another wake-upper for everyone how censorship hurts. we take so much for granted so its an indicator that we have learned to live with it by creating our very own bypassing technology rather then addressing the actual issue at hand at.

Labels: Fine Art of Blogging

posted by S A J Shirazi @ Sunday, September 30, 2007,

24 Comments:

At 10:30 AM PKT, Kat said...: Wow - that is pretty harsh. Don't people over there have any freedom of speech?
At 10:46 AM PKT, Marz said...: I guess if people are still driven enough to fight for the right to freedom of speech, then it could just be the beginning.
At 11:14 AM PKT, Rose said...: I certainly hope it is not the end because we need to hear your voice. What's happening to freedom of speech there and other places across the country. We are going to have to fight for our rights since no one else will.
At 2:36 PM PKT, Moya said...: Shirazi, a chill went down my spine when I read this. Oh! I do hope that this is one of those glitches that cut you off temporarily. I await with you in interest and concern.
At 3:16 PM PKT, Sidhusaaheb said...: There will always be more sites than any one can ban, to enable bloggers to post on and readers to read the blogs.

So, there is nothing to worry about!
At 5:09 PM PKT, Sidhusaaheb said...: After the blogging platforms like Blogger were banned for a few days, recently, in India, the article, the URL of which is as follows, appeared in a popular Indian English daily newspaper:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1773589,curpg-1.cms
At 5:46 PM PKT, Douglas said...: Shirazi, you're acting like something is over. I don't perceive it that way. It's not over until every nation on earth adopts Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in letter and in spirit...

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Who is responsible for the blocking? What's his/her email address?
At 6:18 PM PKT, EXSENO said...: I totally agree with Sidhusaaheb, Keep blogging. In fact it is time for everyone who lives there to voice their opinion and start asking why. And if the reasons for it, is because some bloggers as saying bad thing or are disrespectful, then all of you should say that you should not be punished for the actions of a few people.
Being silent doesn't get any help or any action.
At 6:31 PM PKT, irving said...: Peace and Blessings to you brother ) I think you should sign up for every blog host, wordpress, typepad, etc, and cross post all your posts on each one. They are all pretty much free, and it would protect the written word. If the govt is serious about banning free speech they will have to shut them all down. If it is only after the most popular blog hosts, then it can be circumvented. Also, doesn't Musharraf have a blog? He needs to be inundated with comments. And I would contact Eteraz to get a movement going also.

Ya Haqq!
At 9:10 PM PKT, Syed Sibgatullah said...: blogspot has been banned in pakistan since quite some time now. the pkblogs and inblogs provided a nice workaround. but there's no dearth of more workarounds!!! although it's not straightforward, but one can always try out circumventors. tor is a good one, although it's in no way a full solution to internet blocks exercised by bullshit regimes....like the one that rules pakistan.

shirazi, i got to your blog by typing this in the address bar: http://sajshirazi.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8080

these guys don't seem to have much intelligence. they don't realize that nowadays there's, almost invariably, a solution of pretty much all sorts of internet blocks. the internet works that way. these guys just can't beat technology.

chill out shirazi, and keep going.
At 10:50 PM PKT, Abrar said...: Shocking!!! I hope its some temporary glitch!! why would the government block or ban blogging... it makes no sense!! why dont they ban porn sites or something if they are into blocking internet!!
At 1:02 AM PKT, Syed Sibgatullah said...: you're welcome..and thanks for visiting.

btw, these guys sitting at the helm of affairs have a sick mentality. they would block sites to filter out "inappropriate" content, but would never filter out pornography!!!

and the retarded mentality is also reflected in the fact that by blocking content, they think that the block would remain effective. they can't defeat technology :) .
At 8:41 AM PKT, Naomi said...: This is very disturbing. I pray that you and other Pakistanis continue blogging.
At 2:58 AM PKT, Sidhusaaheb said...: I would say that it is important to always be one step ahead of those imposing censorship and to always have a 'Plan-B', so that even if one way of circumventing the block is rendered ineffective, another can be pressed into service at very short notice.
At 8:29 AM PKT, Anonymous said...: Did you try shysurfer.com ?
At 9:26 AM PKT, Sajjad said...: I'm accessing your site using pkblogs.com. It wasn't working a couple of days ago, but seemed to be ok soon after. Could be a temporary glitch and nothing to do with the PTA at all.

If it was a ban, I think we can come up with some sort of distributed proxying system. So if one domain/IP gets blocked, we can seemlessly shift to another. After all, how many sites will they block?

Though my blog hosting service, weblog.pk, is still small, I expect I'll have to deal with this sort of stuff in future. Better to start preparing now.
At 7:12 PM PKT, Kodijack said...: I am pleased that you are not blocked forever, but it seems to me that life in Pakistan is starting to get a lot harder, would you agree?

I think about it everytime that Pakistan is mentioned in the news, and that has been a lot lately.

Best of luck Shirazi.
At 5:28 PM PKT, Amie said...: well i'm glad that it wasn't really a ban but just a glitched at the server.
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