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
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