Pakistan Tools for India
Pakistan had to deal with its own Internet blocks in March 2006, after the Muhammad cartoons controversy, when Blogger and other sites were blocked. The site pkblogs.com was setup as a proxy specifically to circumvent the block. Just today, Dr. Awab Alvi of the Don’t Block the Blog movement in Pakistan sent a message to give the software to India users to install.
It’s good to see an Internet free culture that transcends national and religious boundaries. Dr. Alvi talked about the project at the recent Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace conference in Manila. You can see his presentation at the site.
The message to the Bloggers Collective mailing list:
Hi Everyone,
I am a fellow blogger living across your borders in Pakistan I am also the co-founder of the Don’t Block the Blog campaign when Pakistan was confronted with the dilemma of facing a blanket blockade of the entire blogspot domain. We seriously thought it was because of a thick and stubborn headed Pakistani government that resulted in such a stupid move but seeing the Indian Government react similarly it seems all governments are the same when they want to implement decisions always without due thought and consideration.
Reading a few emails in this group just recently it seems the Indian government might actually come to its senses and finally lift this blockade surely a big relief to the world, but until then we would like to present the Indian Blogging community with yet another tool to be used on their websites which converts all Blogspot links into a URL utilizing the proxy servers of pkblogs.com.
Feel free to download this tool from the Don’t Block the Blog website – http://help-pakistan.com/main/2006/07/19/pkblogs-url-script-for-website-owners/ – credit to Adnan Siddiqui
The Pakistani blogging community has over the few months learned to co-exist with the ban and has created a number of tools to by-pass this ban.
· You all have already used the proxies of PkBlogs.com and just recently InBlogs.net a creation by Yasir Memon and Naveed Memon
· You may have been exposed to the Grease Monkey script by Mansoor which is designed for Firefox users. – The Word of mAn[S]o0r
We share all these as a gift to build better friends across the border and hope to shed the image of hatred and violence and give way to a peaceful co-existence between to lovely nations.
On behalf of all Pakistanis
Dr. Awab Alvi
—–
July 20th, 2006 02:40
[...] Andrew Lih » Pakistan Tools for India “It’s good to see an Internet free culture that transcends national and religious boundaries.” (tags: censorship india pakistan globalvoices cyber-activism freespeech) [...]
July 20th, 2006 08:40
[...] Andrew Lih, watching the situation from China, has a hopeful observation – the notion that solidary around issues of online free speech can bridge existing divides of national identity. He reprints a letter from Dr. Awab Alvi, a Pakistani dentist and blogger who co-leads the Don’t Block the Blog Campaign, sent to the Bloggers Collective, a group of (mostly) Indian bloggers working to document and fight the block within India. The letter points Indian bloggers to a useful script used by Pakistani bloggers to evade the block in their country. Dr. Alvi closes his letter: We share all these as a gift to build better friends across the border and hope to shed the image of hatred and violence and give way to a peaceful co-existence between to lovely nations. [...]
July 22nd, 2006 01:39
[...] Andrew Lih » Blog Archive » Pakistan Tools for India Andrew Lih discusses the Indian & Pakistan Blogspot ban (tags: activism pakistan) [...]
February 23rd, 2007 04:05
[...] SBG: We’ve heard about the message of Dr. Awab Alvi, the co-founder of the Indian Bloggers Collective Group, and how the DBB was helping their community circumvent the government ban on blogspot.com domain. Can you tell us more about that and how it’s contributing to bridging the divides between activists and bloggers on both sides? Has any regional strategy or willingness to build an anti-censorship alliance been discussed between Pakistani and Indian bloggers? [...]
April 19th, 2007 15:39
[...] SBG: We’ve heard about the message of Dr. Awab Alvi- the co-founder of the “Don’t Block The Blog†(DBTB) campaign- to the Indian Bloggers Collective Group, and how the DBB was helping their community circumvent the government ban on blogspot.com domain. Can you tell us more about that and how it’s contributing to bridging the divides between activists and bloggers on both sides? Has any regional strategy or willingness to build an anti-censorship alliance been discussed between Pakistani and Indian bloggers? [...]