Help-Pakistan.com

In another astonishing move by the Government of Pakistan it appears that the website http://codex.wordpress.org where exists the help and documentation files of the ever popular Content Management System - Wordpress have been blocked for all users and developers in Pakistan. This can be considered as a severe blow to the promotion of the IT industry in Pakistan.

See the traceroute indicating the blocked situation Traceroute for Codex.Wordpress.Org

The PTA has yet again decided to unblock all blogs located on the blogspot domain, we proceed with caution and simply watch and see if this is a permanent change or just a temporary relief till they resume the blocking all over again.

Attached is a Trace Route of a Blogspot Blog that verifies the unblocked status - Traceroute 10th Aug 2006

This is the third time the ban has been lifted previously the ban was resumed after a relief of a 2-3 days

1. Blogspot Ban Lifted - 2nd May 2006
2. Blogspot Unblocked! (again) - 29th May 2006

In light of the recent blogspot ban in India, the blogging community in Pakistan would like to present as a gift to the Indian blogging community a small script that can be inserted into their websites which converts all Blogspot links into a URL utilizing the proxy servers of pkblogs.com

Credit goes out to Adnan Siddiqui for creating this nifty javascript utility which quite simply needs to be installed on your file server and one line of code inserted into the header file of your website. Once installed all your surfers will automatically use pkblogs for all outgoing blogspot links

Download the ZIP file Pkblogs Script.zip

Please consider this as a gift from Pakistan to all Indians in hope of building friends across the border

Yasir Memon & Naveed Memon have come yet again to save the blogging community from the douldrums to have launched Inblogs.net which is similar to pkblogs but more suited for the Indian traffic.

(July 18th, 2006) - Update: It seems that the authorities in India have also decided to enforce a blanket ban on Indian blogs. The Don’t Block The Blog team strongly support the rights of all Indian bloggers and the cause of free speech. The concerned authorities should lift this unfair ban as it cannot be credibly justified under the rationale of “national security”.

Indian (and Pakistani) authorities have set a very wrong precedent in setting up these unfair bans, and we at DBTB believe that this at outright infringement of basic right to free speech.
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Information regarding the ban is provided below by Neha Vishwanathan (South Asia Editor of Global Voices Online):

“Over the last few days it has become apparent that the Indian Government through directives, has been ordering ISPs in India to block access to certain websites. According to both mainstream media and sources from within the Government, the list of blocked websites runs into 22 pages. The list has not been made public officially.

Nobody was told why websites were being blocked. However, as of now - the block appears to be a blanket ban on accessing the following domains - Blogspot.com, Typepad.com and Geocities.com. It is believed the government believes that some of the websites contain material that may threaten national security. Most bloggers find this unlikely.

Indian Bloggers have come together as Bloggers Collective, and are collaborating to disseminate information on circumventing the block to ensure people can continue to publish to their blogs and read them. They are also hoping to make the issue more visible by appealing to the government and ensuring coverage by the Press. If need be, perhaps legal measures could be adopted.”

(30th May, 2006 - 1:00pm) As suspected that our celebrations would turn out to shortlived, the Blogspot.com domain blanket ban has returned, as verified by several of our credible blogging sources in Pakistan.

No (official) word as usual as to why the ban was lifted and why it has returned. We will continue to highlight the issue of this unfair blanket blockade of blogspot.com on the internet. And so the fight continues…

(May 29th, 2006 - 12:30) Through several credible sources (bloggers in Pakistan), we are able to confirm that the blanket blogspot.com domain ban has been lifted and the blogspot blogs are accessible for the internet audience in Pakistan.

We do not currently know if the lifting of this ban is temporary, as we have previously experienced the lifting of the blogspot ban which turned out to be rather short lived. No official word has been issued by the concerned authorities (as yet) regarding this current move. We, along with all Pakistani (and International) bloggers and internet free speech supporters hope that this current lifting of the blogspot.com ban turns out to be permanent.

A sample traceroute enclosed….
Read the rest of this entry

(May 6th 2006 21:00) It has come to our attention that PTA has again blocked Blogspot access to all inernet users in Pakistan. We await more information and will update this site as conclusive findings come forth. The Don’t Block the Blog campaign has issued a Press Release please forward to your area of influnence.

(May 2nd 2006 20:00) It appears as of this moment that the blanket ban on the blogspot.com domain sites has now been lifted. This has been confirmed by various sources (bloggers) in Pakistan.

We would like to think that our collective efforts had to do with the unlifting of the ban. But rest assurred our support for a free and open internet still continues. Dont Block The Blog site remains online and so does our campaign in support for free speech and particularly in case this unlifting of the blanket ban blogspot turns out to be temporary.

The creative mind of a few local Pakistanis Yasir Memon & Naveed - has created this nifty utility for those individuals in Pakistan stuck behind the Government supported censorship on our Internet

The way this service works is that you can simply go-to

Alternatively head on over to www.pkblogs.com - you get NO ads or any annoying pop-up to disturb your surfing experience, the service converts all inside and outside links