Help-Pakistan.com

I am sure many have heard and read about the Burqa clad women armed with sticks who were protesting in Islamabad. The set of images has been displayed across millions of websites showing yet another extremist element in Pakistan.

To make matters even worse the government has gone to the extent of literally unplugging the LalMasjid.org website which was being used to promote the struggle. A little investigation into the site goes to show that this website was barely created two months back on 19th Feb 2007 practically days before the Chief Justice of Pakistan controversy. Blocking the website was easy as it was being hosted on a local Pakistan based server at Comsats and all was needed was a stern warning out to the ISP which quickly resulted in a complete shutdown. At the moment the website is completely dead and displays a ‘Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)’ error.

A trace-route from within Pakistan shows it as being blocked by COMSATS (PIE) servers where the site seems to have been taken down probably on the directives of the government and PTA is not blocking the website, it probably now does not need to get involved since a gag-order has already been issued to Comsats

_{LalMasjid.org Registrant Contact Information:
Name: Abdul Rashid Ghazi
Organization: Markazi Jamia Masjid LAL MASJID
Address 1: Markazi Jamia Masjid Lal Masjid
Address 2: Markazi Jamia Masjid Lal Masjid
City: Islamabad
State: Capital
Zip: 44000
Country: PK
Phone: +92.512277313×1111
Fax: +92.512877418
Expiration Date: 2008-02-19 07:47:54
Creation Date: 2007-02-19 07:47:54}

Traceroute from WITHIN PAKISTAN
traceroute to lalmasjid.org (203.124.43.40), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 FE-3-0-100M-CORE.nexlinx.net.pk (202.59.80.2) 0.786 ms 0.608 ms 0.700 ms
2 10.10.80.1 (10.10.80.1) 2.091 ms 1.264 ms 1.269 ms
3 lhr63.pie.net.pk (202.125.147.5) 1.807 ms 2.355 ms 1.751 ms
4 g5-0-0lhr63c1.pie.net.pk (202.125.138.163) 1.703 ms 3.703 ms 2.037 ms
5 pos1-1.rwp44gsrc1.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.26) 7.590 ms 7.367 ms 7.638 ms
6 rwp44.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.82) 7.219 ms 8.428 ms 8.270 ms
7 Comsats-fa0-1.iba1d1.pie.net.pk (202.125.154.5) 7.126 ms 7.884 ms 8.271 ms
8 210.56.14.29 (210.56.14.29) 13.174 ms 12.136 ms 13.264 ms
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *

Traceroute from OUTSIDE of PAKISTAN
1 161.58.14.161 (161.58.14.161) 0.460 ms 0.300 ms 0.248 ms
2 ge-1-1-0-278.r00.stngva01.us.wh.verio.net (204.2.123.185) 0.425 ms 0.360 ms 0.326 ms
3 vl-5.r03.stngva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.27.215) 0.587 ms 0.364 ms 0.323 ms
4 xe-4-0-0.r21.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.18) 0.686 ms 0.739 ms 0.710 ms
5 ae-0.r20.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.16) 0.552 ms 0.533 ms 0.537 ms
6 p16-0.uunet.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.8.2) 1.642 ms 1.590 ms 1.590 ms
7 0.so-1-1-0.XT2.DCA5.ALTER.NET (152.63.43.178) 1.683 ms 1.731 ms 1.645 ms
8 0.so-6-0-1.XT2.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.3.178) 7.483 ms 7.470 ms 7.493 ms
9 0.so-3-0-0.XR2.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.19.34) 7.553 ms 7.554 ms 7.579 ms
10 182.ATM6-0.IG3.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.26.45) 7.737 ms 7.528 ms 83.ATM6-0.IG3.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.26.49) 7.491 ms
11 pctl-gw.customer.alter.net (208.192.182.34) 230.705 ms 230.672 ms 230.692 ms
12 pos1-0.rwp44gsrc2.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.21) 251.171 ms 251.575 ms 251.725 ms
13 rwp44.pie.net.pk (202.125.159.250) 250.594 ms 250.694 ms 250.662 ms
14 Comsats-fa0-1.iba1d1.pie.net.pk (202.125.154.5) 251.075 ms 251.020 ms 250.991 ms
15 210.56.14.29 (210.56.14.29) 255.203 ms 254.757 ms 254.471 ms
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *

We at Don’t Block the Blog in association with the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan simply object to the blocking of websites and all types of free flow of information as it only makes matters worse. The world must know both sides of the story, and blocking it goes to prove that the government has something to hide, some information which it does not want the world to read. Chalk up yet another strike against the government of Pakistan

Latest Update: Lal Masjid organization have switched to a new domain lalmasjid.com and also have moved their servers to an international host to avoid such problems with the local government

PRESS RELEASE
_{Download the PDF Version of the Press Release}

In recent news, it has come to light that for a period of four days the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority accidentally blocked millions of websites which suddenly became inaccessible for Internet users in Pakistan. The accidentally blocked sites are popular, non-controversial web pages with high traffic, including Google.com, Download.com, Microsoft.com, Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, BBC, CNN, Systematic, Akamai, PC World, MTV, Best Buy, Logitech and ESPN.

For over a year, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has been actively blocking a number of websites after the the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered it to censor twelve specific websites. Upon its own initiative,in an apparent misuse of the Supreme Court order the PTA also blocked the entire blogspot.com domain which hosts over 20 million blogs .

Over the four days, a malfunctioning unit within the internet monitoring body accidentally started blocking some major websites, What irked internet users in general was the apathy exhibited by the concerned authorities in attempting to resolve this issue. Following true bureaucratic tenet, the PTA refused to acknowledge their fault and are currently in denial mode.

This recent incident of malfunctioning technology has suddenly forced the PTA to remove all blocking mechanisms that were previously being enforced on blogspot.com and other so called “offensive sites” which also included a number of Indian websites and blogs related to the promotion of the Baluchistan cause.

We at Don’t Block the Blog have been highlighting the inherent flaws in selective internet censorship and had predicted such disaster was likely to happen . Any type of filtering limits the access to information to the people of Pakistan. A four day incident such as what recently happened also portrays a negative image of Pakistan to foreign investors who are looking to approach Pakistan for IT development. Intermittent catastrophic failure of Internet access in Pakistan will, by itself, drive business from Pakistan to other countries.

Over the past year, the DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG campaign has been recognized both nationally and internationally as an credible organization highlighting free speech issues in Pakistan. The DBTB banner is hosted on a number of websites around the world, and is a testament that many people believe in supporting the cause of free speech in Pakistan.

We at Don’t Block the Blog continue to strongly opposes any form of internet censorship and request national and international bloggers, print media, and free speech organizations to help support our cause and to continue to highlight this issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs for internet users in Pakistan.

Background:

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain (www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting upwards of 8 million blogs globally, according to some estimates.

The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) campaign (http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/) was launched by the Alvi-e team, Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie, on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. Approximately at the same time the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan (formerly known as The Action Group Against Blogspot Ban in Pakistan - AGABBIP) (http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP ), a mailing list with dozens of contributing members also was formed to protest this form of censorship in Pakistan.

Press Release - Don’t Block the Blog Continues to Fight Pakistan’s Internet Blockade at the 1st Year Anniversary
Press Release Download LInk - PDF

It has been exactly one year since the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority initiated a blanket block on the entire blogspot.com domain. So far there seems no recourse to the ban despite the repeated attempts of a strong lobby of individuals pressuring the concerned authorities to review this unfair ban. The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) team, (with the support of other Pakistani and international bloggers,) highlighted this issue successfully in both the national and the international press. Since the blockade, a couple of savvy Pakistani programmers have created sites that help by-pass the ban for internet users in Pakistan. The DBTB team specifically launched the Bloggers.Pakistan web site (www.bloggers.pk), the first Pakistani Blog Aggregator, to help encourage blogging and to ensure that those unfairly banned Pakistani blogs that were not fully censored by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, giving them a chance to be read by the global internet audience in Pakistan as well as internationally.

Since the censorship continues even one year down, the team members of Don’t Block the Blog would like to issue an advisory to all affected and prospective bloggers in Pakistan to establish new blogs preferably on some other free blog hosting services for example like http://wordpress.com, http://www.livejournal.com or http://movabletype.com hence keeping the blog hosted on a domain outside the envelope of the URL’s blocked in Pakistan.

DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG campaign has over the year become recognized internationally as a credible organization representing free speech issues in Pakistan. To an extent that their banner is hosted on a number of websites around the world, surely a testament that many people believe in supporting the cause to relieve the censorship in Pakistan. We continue to strongly opposes any form of Internet censorship and request national and international bloggers, print media, and free speech organizations to help support our cause and to continue to highlight this issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs for Internet users in Pakistan.

Background:

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain (www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting upwards of 8 million blogs globally, according to some estimates.

The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) campaign (http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/) was launched by the Alvi-e team, Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie, on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. Approximately at the same time the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan (formerly known as The Action Group Against Blogspot Ban in Pakistan - AGABBIP) (http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP ), a mailing list with dozens of contributing members also was formed to protest this form of censorship in Pakistan.

Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) is happy to announce to the Pakistani bloggers that some serious progress has been made during the last few of days regarding the internet censorship (blogspot ban ) issue in Pakistan.

Google Inc.’s key representative (Policy Analyst) has been in direct contact with DBTB members in reference to the blogspot ban. We were informed that Google has been closely following the activities of DBTB and our efforts to address the issue of the blanket ban, and Google strongly supports the cause of the Pakistani bloggers.

During the exchange of emails, Omer Alvie provided a detailed picture on the history of the ban, along with highlighting the collective efforts of DBTB and Pakistani bloggers to fight this unfair blanket ban. Additionally, the serious problems regarding the new version of Blogger.com were also highlighted, along with requesting a more direct and concrete support from Google in helping resolve the current blogspot censorship issue and providing continued support for the cause of free speech in Pakistan.

In reference to our request and direct communication with Google, DBTB was contacted by the appointed representative of Google in Pakistan. Dr. Awab Alvi had a detailed meeting with the representative reiterating the need to address the Pakistani bloggers’ concerns regarding the blanket ban with the appropriate government authorities. DBTB was informed that a meeting will be held soon with the Ministry of Information and Technology, in which the Google (Pak) representative will force this issue to light and hopefully work towards resolving the unfair blanket ban issue once and for all.

In addition, Dr. Awab also reminded the Google Representative, that in the meantime, it would best to get direct involvement from Google in configuring the pkblogs and inblogs proxy servers to be better at handling the recent upgrade to new version of Blogger.

Although the DBTB team remains optimistic with the recent developments and the direct involvement of Google to help resolve the blanket ban issue, we are also aware of the political machinations within our government which could mean that the process for a permanent resolution to the ban problem will be a slow one.

We at DBTB stand determined to continue our efforts in this regard, and hope to update you as soon as we are informed of any concrete solutions or resolutions to the blog censorship issue.

After the release of the last Don’t Block The Blog (DBTB) Press Alert, I’ve been in discussion with several Pakistan based bloggers regarding the problems they are facing accessing specific blogging platforms and blogs in general. While Teeth Maestro expertly continues to source technical solutions to the problem, I’ve been updating with various international (free speech) organizations regarding the blogging problem in Pakistan. The most prominent of these Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), also known as Reporters Without Borders, has been fighting for the protection of journalists and free speech in general for the past 22 years. RSF strongly supports and continues to fight for the rights of all international bloggers.

I have been fortunate enough to be in communication with RSF from the start of DBTB. In my recent discussion with Mr. Julien Pain (Head of the Internet Freedom Desk at RSF), we were both in agreement that the blanket ban was not just an a strong interference for Pakistani bloggers but may actually turn into a deterrence where some bloggers might just get fed up with the problems with the accessing their blogs and give up blogging altogether. We cannot allow this to happen. With that concern in mind I have a small reminder for blogspot domain bloggers to please source alternate solutions for hosting your blog. Launch a new blog on typepad, wordpress or livejournal, until such time when a concrete solution is provided to you for accessing your blogspot blog so you can permanently transfer all your old posts to your new blog. The point is to continue blogging and invite others to blog. I realize that there are no guarantees with either of these other blog solutions but it is most likely to be better than blogspot.

To additionally encourage Pakistani bloggers to exercise the right to free speech, DBTB would like to announce a small writing competition which for Pakistan based bloggers. RSF which provides a paid solution for prominent political and social bloggers to host their blogs at the RSF blogging platform, has decided to award a free blog, on my behest, to the winner of this competition. The topic for the writing competition will obviously will have to do with free speech. The formal announcement and rules of the competition will soon be highlighted on DBTB blog, Bloggers.Pakistan, and the respective blogs of the DBTB team members.

What is the advantage of (winning and) owning a blog at rsf.org?

- Your blog will be associated with an NGO that defends press freedom and the rights of bloggers and journalists.
- Your address will be myblog.rsfblog.org
- You can contact others in the rsfblog community, people who know about and are interested in what’s happening on the other side of the world and care about human rights
- What you post may be picked up on the front page of “Looking at the world through Blogs,” a website that reviews what bloggers everywhere are doing.
- Your details will remain totally confidential. Unlike hosts such as Yahoo! or Google, who in the past have worked with authorities in repressive countries by providing private information.
- This blog is the least likely to cause you problems as it is a paid service platform and should provide you the requisite support technically and in support of your free speech.
- It is just one of the ‘coolest’ blog addresses to have on the internet!

That’s all for now but I hope to bring you more DBTB updates and hopefully some concrete solutions to the Pakistan blogging ban issue.

If you recall a few months back we had reported that Mahmood.tv was blocked by the Bahraini Government since he was instrumental in exposing the Jamal Dawood scandal. This time around he has continued to be vocal yet again hitting hard at the Minister of Municipalities and Agriculture in Bahrain for his involvement in a number of corrupt schemes (First Ministerial Brainfart of the Season). Mahmood remains a very outspoken blogger from Bahrain who chooses to speak the truth this time around it seems that the Agriculture Minister plans to take him to court for his posts despite the fact that Mahmood has repeatedly complied to edit the offending article.

Libel Suit Going Ahead: Unfortunately the mediation between the minister of municipalities and agriculture and myself to resolve the dispute and perceived libel has not been successful. I have demonstrated my good will over the last few days by amending the original article, but that it seems is not enough for the right honorable gentleman. The minister wants to pursue his legal right and extract his pound of flesh. I re-iterate that I do not believe what I published was libelous in any way. The intention was never to besmirch his person, but rather I was criticizing his ministry, an executive body which not only should accept criticism, but also welcome and encourage it with open arms. He now wants to take me to court. So be it. — Mahmood.tv

Later in the day Bahrain Journalist Association also supported Mahmood and condemned the Minister for reneging on an agreement with Mahmood which was being negotiated by Adel Marzooq (Arabic blog)

We at Don’t Block the Blog truly support Mahmood in this ongoing battle and wish him a safe and peacful solution against the corrupt, if any.

For the past few days especially yesterday I have exchanged a number of emails around the globe to figure out a solution for the deteriorating blogging condition in Pakistan which started a few days back as reported by Don’t Block the Blog, Press Release of 3rd February and also on Teeth Maestro’s blog, I have a few things to share so I thought I would d formulate this into a small report.

PSIPHON - http://psiphon.civisec.org/

I was probing if PsiPhon could be used from Pakistan to handle the Pakistani Censorship (PsiPhon is a better replacement for TOR which I talked about a few months back here) but unfortunately PsiPhon does not support SSL at the moment but today Nart Villeneuve (of Citizen Lab who has been actively involved with the creation of PsiPhon) responded that the next update will definitely handle SSL which is due to be out in the coming few days and more close to a month.

I quote a few sections of his email correspondence with everyone

My understanding is that psiphon will allow https/ssl connection soon. There are other ways depending on you setup, for example, if your version of php is compiled with openssl support fsockopen (http://ca.php.net/manual/en/function.fsockopen.php) will support ssl:// (same as https) also cgiproxy (http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/) will support https:// connections if you have openssl and the perl module Net::SSLeay. However, because of all the scripts and so forth used by the blogger interface getting a web-based proxy (such as cgiproxy, or psiphon when it supports https) to work seamlessly will be difficult.

On a personal level I did get that cgiproxy setup but sadly not on a HTTPS framework - as that requires and expensive certificate to the tune of $250 by a certifying agency. But in what is definitely a concern is his statement here that should be weighed heavily before creating any such solution.

There is another important consideration here. The operator of the “proxy” — whatever it is — will be able to collect all the usernames/passwords of all the bloggers who login via that interface! And since the account is now tied to your google account, the proxy owner could get all your gmail too!

Hence the security threats is definitely an issue of grave concern. In slight of our problems in Pakistan Nart has also sent a copy of our email exchange to a few contacts at Google since he has been interacting very closely with them for the past year and a half, probing the option if the blogspot back-end can remain on an unencrypted platform to be accessible from Pakistan, maybe not publicized but more as an underhand tweak to enable bloggers full access to the blogspot interface.

PKBLOGS

In other news, I also have had a good IM chat last night with Naveed Memon about solving the issue at the PkBlogs end. He was very understanding and his one line really conveyed a strong message “even if I am too busy, we can’t after all, let them win!” That I feel is the spirit with which Naveed and Yasir Memon have done for the Pakistani blog community over the past year, I think their efforts should definitely be lauded.

In our detailed discussion I think we both understood the gist of the problem (as long as the gmail sign-in process can be handled with the proxy script it should be a walk in the park - its more of configuring the pkblogs script to retain the cookie used to sign in) let it be well understood that this configuration of retaining the cookie solves the accessibility issue but introduces a huge privacy leak, as pointed out by Nart but it does definitely the issue, Naveed suggested we can configure to have the cookie expire and discarded after say 30 minutes, but even then the issue persists, as a safety precaution I have requested him (if possible) to have the script evaluated by someone independent to have transparency in the process, thought I trust him but for the sake of the overall community we should think this issue out thoroughly in all honesty.

We may have nailed the problem, but a solution has to be created from scratch, he has said he will definitely give it a shot despite a heavy workload on a number of projects at hand - he sadly has not given us a time frame but trusting him I suspect it will be soon

We also feel that some one should take the initiative on the Legal aspect of this battle - we need to get that going ASAP.

For Immediate Release
3rd February, 2007

– ALERT ! –
PAKISTANI BLOGGERS SHOULD NOT
UPGRADE TO BLOGGER BETA

It has been over eleven months since the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has enforced a blanket ban on the entire blogspot.com domain and so far there seems no recourse to the ban despite the repeated attempts of a strong lobby of concerned individuals pressuring the concerned authorities to review this unfair ban. The latest series of improvements undertaken by Google to improve the blogspot interface seem to be causing problems for Pakistani Bloggers. Previously despite the blockade the bloggers were able to easily access the back-end of Blogspot.com which by chance happened to exist on a different IP address, with the recent improvements in Blogspot, it now is difficult to even access the back-end of the popular interface, in effect completely blocking the Google service.

The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) team, (with support of other Pakistani and international bloggers) would like to issue an ALERT to all Pakistani bloggers to resist the urge to voluntarily upgrade the account and start initiating steps to move to alternate hosting solutions once the upgrade becomes compulsory as it would definitely block access to their blog.

As an update, the team members of Dont Block the Blog would like to issue an advisory to all affected and prospective bloggers in Pakistan to establish new blogs preferably on other free blog hosting services like http://wordpress.com, http://www.livejournal.com or http://movabletype.com which will ensure the domain outside the envelop of the blanket ban URLs blocked by the authorities in Pakistan.

The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) team, continues to highlight the issues which have plagued the Pakistani blogspohere since March of 2006 in the national and the international press. Since the blockade, a couple of savvy Pakistani programmers have created sites that help by-pass the unfair blanket ban for internet users in Pakistan. The DBTB team specifically, launched the Bloggers.Pakistan web site (www.bloggers.pk), the first Pakistani Blog Aggregator, to help encourage blogging and to ensure that those unfairly banned Pakistani blogs that were not officially censored by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, have a chance to be read by the global internet audience.

DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG strongly opposes any form of internet censorship and request the national and international bloggers, media and free speech organizations to help support our cause and to continue to highlight this issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs for the internet users in Pakistan.

Background:

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) had initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain (www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting upwards of 8 million blogs globally, according to some estimates.

The DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG (DBTB) campaign (http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/ ) was launched by Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. Approximately at the same time the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan (formerly known as The Action Group Against Blogspot Ban in Pakistan - AGABBIP) (http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP ), a mailing list with dozens of contributing members also was formed to protest this form of censorship in Pakistan.

For Further Information:

Omer Alvie
Email: over_email@yahoo.com
URL: http://www.theoliveream.com

Dr. Awab Alvi
Email: drawab@cyber.net.pk
URL: http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog

As the blanket ban on blogspot is still persisting after many months, Don’t Block The Blog (DBTB) team would like to remind and recommend Pakistani bloggers that to ensure your continue to have a voice in the blogging community, it is essential that you now choose alternative venues for hosting your respective blogs other than blogger.com (blogspot.com).

It has become apparent that even with by-pass proxy solutions available for Pakistani blogspot bloggers, it is at times difficult to post to blogs and additionally, even commenting on blogspot blogs has become a problem for internet users in Pakistan. The new beta version at blogger (blogspot.com) has not solved the problem for most bloggers, but has made the process of blogging even more tedious according to the feedback we have received from many bloggers.

DBTB strongly suggests, that all Pakistan based blogspot bloggers, please switch to other prominent alternatives such as wordpress, typepad or livejournal. We recommend these alternatives so that those affected by the blogspot ban continue to blog via alternative means, and the viewership for each respective blog does not diminish over time.

That said, let us make one thing very clear, we at DBTB will continue to fight against and highlight the issue of the unfair blanket blogspot ban. We still believe that it serves no other purpose other than hindering the freedom of expression for Pakistani bloggers.

Our main aim shall always remain to support and promote the cause of freedom of speech and expression, specifically on the internet considering the global political climate, for not just Pakistani but international bloggers.

Over the few months pkblogs and inblogs proxy servers have constantly been facing a problem where it was becoming difficult for readers to make comments on blogspot websites. This was primarily due to Google testing its Blogger Beta system.

Mansoor has who had intially created the greasemonkey script for FireFox to help us use pkblogs, has now released yet another script which will allow readers to post comments on blogspot.com.

Shout out to Mansoor