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Facebook Censorship

Pakistan Seeks To Block Facebook Again 98

Posted by samzenpus from the no-farmville-for-you dept.
Mightee writes "Pakistan, which was in the news last year for blocking Facebook over a 'Draw Mohammad Day' competition, is seeking to ban the social network again due to the second round of the same competition, reports Pakistan Today. Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed, presiding over the Lahore High Court, ordered the Ministry of Information and Technology to block access to Facebook nationwide on the charge of 'spreading religious hatred on the Internet.' The court also directed the ministry to police the Internet and block all other websites that were found guilty of the same charge, but it spared search engines like Google (which it is targeting for other reasons)."
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Pakistan Seeks To Block Facebook Again More

Pakistan Seeks To Block Facebook Again

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  • Oh just block pakistan already (Score:3)

    by sqldr ( 838964 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @02:39PM (#37471718)

    Seriously. If their government don't want to use the internet, then they can fuck off.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

      But then we might be deprived of all those great posts about how women shouldn't be allowed to learn to read. And what would the world be without their shitty "God is great! Now check out these pics of me beheading someone for not wearing a beard!" blogs?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sqldr ( 838964 )

        aaargh! you found my twitter feed!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Yeah, thanks for shitting all over the people in Pakistan fighting and dying for liberty.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Its another mechanism to control the social uprising and it wont last long....hopefully!

        But then we might be deprived of all those great posts about how women shouldn't be allowed to learn to read. And what would the world be without their shitty "God is great! Now check out these pics of me beheading someone for not wearing a beard!" blogs?

        Interestingly, Karachi University has 75% female population and so that many other universities and schools across. Although there are problems abound, but talk about 'blowing' things out of proportion..the sick taliban mentality does not respect any boundary, religious or political or even sanity.....

        - A Pakistani national, born in Nigeria, raised up in Saudi Arabia and lived in Germany! BooHoo!

    • Free or GTFO! Aw crap, we just lost access to Blurmany and TOSralia!

    • Most ruddy jolly goodness gracious, with all your first posting clever dickie goings on isn't it here in Newcastels, way aye.

      Have you tried the switching it off and back on, good day. [bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

    • yea, they have the right to go back to the stone age whenever they want, it would makes them far less dangerous if the only book they ever get to read is that holy quran of theirs ? maybe

  • spreading religious hatred on the Internet

    As opposed to hiding it out on a compound in Abbottabad?

    • spreading religious hatred on the Internet

      Perhaps they just don't want any more competition in that area, however feeble the competition is. It seems that there are already far too many countries with despicable laws enforcing religious fanaticism (Pakistan: death penalty for changing your religion. Malaysia: religion determined by ethnicity, etc.).

  • Is that REALLY the ruling? Seriously? I'm sorry but Pakistan, for being a nation that owns and operates nuclear weapons, needs some tougher skin.

  • Don't over think religion. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @02:47PM (#37471794) Homepage
    Now I'm not a muslim but, it seems to me the whole basis for not depicting Mohammed is probably in the same vein as christian tenet of not worshipping "carved" images (likely of Christ), which serve as nothing more than a focus to keep people on the message rather than the man that gave it. Granted this is my own interpretation, but it seems people just can't help but use one sin to fight another sin, which in itself is an oxymoron. Sometimes I think it would haven been easier to just say "hey guys!! Be good to each other and make each other happy" instead of a bunch of "laws" for religious lawyers to pour over so that they can show their entrance exam was passed to get into heaven.
    • Are you kiding? Christians love worshiping images of Christ [plainfront.com].

    • Actually the "graven images" prohibition was formulated by the Israelite tribes as they shifted into monotheism. And theoretically the Christians inherited it, but between icons, crosses and pictures of the Virgin Mary being venerated, a good portion of Christianity doesn't take that very seriously, unless of course the image in question is of Thor or Vishnu or some nasty non-Christian deity.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Hentes ( 2461350 )
        Only Catholics and Orthodoxes do it, Protestants don't. And the problem is not really with the image itself but with praising it as God.

        • I'm married to a practicing Catholic, and she doesn't look upon the veneration of Mary or the Saints as treating that veneration as the same as if it was a god. In fact, the whole notion of veneration makes it rather clear that veneration is not the same as worship.

          Of course, I think the whole lot, Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox alike, are full of crap, but that's an entirely separate discussion.

    • You know what? If you feel like that, you're more faithful to your religion than the majority of all religious people in the world, regardless of religion.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      It's one of those odd things. And it's actually covered at least in the various writings that you should treat your neighbor as yourself and all that. Remember that Christianity and Judaism(much like in other world religions) have both had reformations. And in those cases, during the reformations there was a lot of infighting, doctrinal wars, and all that. With and without blood being shed, and in the end. You had your hangers on to the old ways, you had your splits, and you had those that said 'screw

  • Little overboard perhaps? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I know a lot of people that dont like the new changes that Facebook threw out there but banning the site? A little overboard perhaps?

  • Hatred for the new interface too? (Score:3)

    by macwhizkid ( 864124 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @02:51PM (#37471840)

    Ironic given the level of unrest in the USA today... about the new FB interface, that is.

    "People in most countries use Facebook to protest their government. People in the USA use Facebook to protest Facebook."

    • "People ... Facebook"

            So wait, Facebook it the government in the USA now?

      Mycroft

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crossmr ( 957846 )

      This is an awful mess. I can't find anything. Stories are all out of order. I like to log-on and scroll back until I see a story I recognize and catch up and check out anything interesting. Now things are all over the place, we're forced into top stories (which I've always considered useless and never used) and there doesn't seem to be any way to change it or opt out. Taking away choice is never a good thing.

  • Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed (Score:3)

    by ZombieBraintrust ( 1685608 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @02:52PM (#37471844)
    I think we do a diservice to Pakastan by pretending a country wants to block Facebook. Let pile are ridicule on Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed the judge who is promoting this. By saying Pakastan want this we are letting him off the hook.

    • I think we do disservice to Pakistan by pretending it's a country. This is a place with at least two parallel governments, one civilian, one covert, and it's impossible to say who actually runs the place. This is a place that has tribal groups who fell more loyalty to the contents of the nearest outhouse than they do to other tribal groups or to the nation state as a whole.

      • I just think it is wierd that we can get a protest going to draw insulting pictures of a dead islamic prophet, but we ignore the actual living douch bags. Wouldn't it be better to do an "Officer Bubbles" meme on this judge?

  • Can't blame them..... (Score:3)

    by genner ( 694963 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @02:52PM (#37471854)
    I don't like the new layout either.

  • Given FB's latest round of changes (Facebook in Facebook), I imagine it won't be long before everyone pisses off and Pakistan will have to start blocking Google+ instead.

    • This has been a recurring theme for a while. "Everyone hates these changes, so everyone will go places that are not facebook." If it happens, great. I just don't think it will. The vast majority will just settle down and get used to the new interface.
  • "spreading religious hatred on the Internet" -> "spreading religious (freedom/opinions) on the Internet"

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Goaway ( 82658 )

      Generally, none of the people participating in any "draw Mohammed day" are forbidden from doing so. Thus, they are not actually doing anything to promote any kind of freedom.

      What they are doing is acting like brats and angering a lot of people. That is not a productive way to spread your views, it will just cause people to backlash.

      • If your faith is so brittle that some non-believer mocking it causes you to go into a frenzy, then I posit that you are little better than the people you're angry at.

        It was a pathetic infantile set of responses to a pathetic infantile set of inflammatory acts. Both sides are equally pathetic and stupid. But when push comes to shove, I'll have to throw in my lot with the pathetic infants drawing nasty pictures over those demanding such actions be banned, because, well, the latter are well and truly enemies

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EdIII ( 1114411 )

          I don't have a problem with them banning Facebook at all. That is liberty. If the people of Pakistan truly did not like it, they could change their government through revolution, within the framework of their country's legal system, or just leave.

          As another poster pointed out, Pakistan is hardly represented by those in power. There is a fairly large non-trivial number of Pakistani people that are more moderate and have no interest in killing another person based on their beliefs at all. Yet, at the same

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rob Kaper ( 5960 )

            If the people of Pakistan truly did not like it, they could change their government through revolution, within the framework of their country's legal system, or just leave.

            Or just not send HTTP requests to facebook.com?

      • Citation needed for the "not a productive way to spread your views." I would bet it is quite effective. That is why it is illegal in so many places.

      • So what you're saying is Muslims get violently angry when people who haven't been forbidden from doing things do the things they haven't been forbidden from doing.

  • Based on the changes made to Facebook today, it'll become as irrelevant as MySpace in less than a year, maybe even shorter. Instead of a nice simple interface... well it's crap now. Thanks Facebook!

  • Pakistan doesn't like the new Interface either.

  • Now, I know most of you are thinking "why can't every day be 'Draw Mohammed Day'?", but just KNOCK IT OFF. This is why Pakistan can't have nice things.

  • Stupidty knows no bounds (Score:3)

    by xenobyte ( 446878 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @03:11AM (#37477160)

    People have been drawing pictures of Mohammad throughout the ages but for some (stupid and illogical) reason it was a page of cartoons in the danish newspaper Jyllandsposten that really got them worked up.

    Now, Denmark is a small country (pop. 5 mill) and the newspaper in question is only written in danish, and is extremely unlikely to be found in shops outside the western hemisphere. Nobody in the Muslim world would have known about those cartoons if it was for an expedition of imams from Denmark that travelled around the middle east with a collection of drawings and other artworks, of which several had no connection with Muhammad, like a photo from a french farmers festival featuring a man with a pig snout. The intension was to create headlines and incite a response. It worked and ever since certain regions have been way overly sensitive about drawing Muhammad. The only way to combat that is to keep on drawing Muhammad again and again and again until they figure out that a drawing is just that - a drawing. Nothing to be worked up about.

    For a rather complete collection of Muhammad images through the ages, including the infamous Muhammad Cartoons, go here: http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/ [zombietime.com]

  • gives a great insight; I was expecting all of them to cheered up by this, but a lot of people are against this, they realise the futility of banning facebook, and the hypocrisy of banning facebook while porn sites go unchecked.

    Also, it seems a lot of them earn money via facebook, interesting, I never knew you could do that.

    http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/09/facebook-to-be-blocked/ [pakistantoday.com.pk]

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