This website is now on the PTA list of blocked websites, and is being blocked at the PIE servers, so you might not be able to access it from certain ISP’s in Pakistan which are routed through PIE. Discussion is ongoing at the forums here.
The possible reasons for censoring this particular website – none really, though there is a lot of criticism of PTCL, Wateen, PTA, and a few other local internet companies, but nothing out of the extraordinary.
I’m reposting an earlier article on internet censorship which I’d written but never posted here before, which explains how the government tries to censor the internet in Pakistan.
Internet Censorship the Pakistani way
March 2nd 2006 the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority to block 12 websites. This list was in addition to the hundreds of thousands of websites which Pakistan already blocks. Up till now, most internet users in Pakistan had never really cared to speak up about this censorship, but this new blacklist caused millions of personal websites hosted at Blogspot to be banned. There are hundreds of Pakistani websites hosted at Blogspot, so this action by the government led internet users to form an action group against this ban.
To understand what exactly it means to block a website on the internet, one has to first understand how the internet works.
The internet is a strange beast. Many of us use it every day – not just when sitting in front of a computer, but every time when using a credit card, filling fuel, sending a SMS, taking a flight – in short just about every modern activity depends on the internet. The use of the internet is spreading everywhere, even to the most surprising places – some farmers in India receive current market prices for their crops on internet enabled cellphones, and the early warning system for tsunamis being developed after the 2004 ocean quake works through the internet.
The internet is a gigantic 3 dimensional spider web, where every intersection is a computer which is connected to every other computer on the internet – regardless of its location. The Internet is not built by design – it grows organically as computers and networks join it as they please. It is hard to visualize what the Internet has grown to now just 30 odd years after starting with a handful of computers. The map above represents just a partial view of the Internet. The amount of computers on the Internet is staggering – recent estimates puts the figure close to a billion computers, and growing fast.
For the lay person, the internet generally means the world wide web. The internet is actually the underlying platform on which the web runs. The internet is made up of computers and cables – the computers send packets of information to other computers on the Internet through these cables, and the beauty of the Internet is that these packets can go through any path. Put up a packet with a correct address anywhere on the Internet, and it will arrive at its destination, usually in a few milliseconds.
The way the internet works is very simple. Multiple independent networks of rather arbitrary design are all connected to each other. Every computer on the Internet has a unique address, so when you send a message to another computer on the Internet, the underlying software breaks the message up into data packets, puts the destination address on every one of these packets, and sends them on to the next computer it’s connected to. As the packets arrive, each receiving computer looks at the address, and if it’s not addressed to that pc, sends it onwards. This process happens over and over again until the packet arrives at its destination. Each packet of data takes the best possible route available to it, which will vary even over the milliseconds the sending computer takes to send out each packet.
The internet was designed from the ground up to resist damage – and censorship is just another form of damage to the internet. If the data doesn’t make it through to its destination, then another route will be automatically tried, until all possible routes are exhausted. So if one computer, or a whole bunch of them, decides to block certain types of data, then they will be automatically bypassed.
Pakistan has 3 major internet links to the world, which consist of two submarine fibre optic links and a few satellite links. All of these are controlled by the Pakistan Internet Exchange, or PIE, which monitors all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic from Pakistan. The primary purpose of PIE is to filter content as the Government deems fit. A secondary purpose is to keep track of all incoming and outgoing e-mails, which by parliamentary order are kept for a period of at least 3 months.
If the government controls all outside links to the world, then one might think that it should be a simple matter to censor the internet. Yet this isn’t the case, for the current filtering system in place is very crude. There is a list of banned addresses which the computers installed at the Pakistan Internet Exchange look at, and accordingly block requests by users to the computers on the blacklist. This is where the internet comes in – for if an address is blocked, than all you have to do is go through another, unblocked address. This computer is called a proxy server, and it acts as a man in the middle between you and the blocked computer. Any computer on the Internet can do the job of a proxy – so potentially, there are a billion ways of bypassing censorship!
Many of the top universities in the world like Duke, Stanford, MIT, Harvard and Princeton (to name just a few) have set up such proxy systems to enable users around the world to bypass censorship. Besides universities and individuals acting on their own to protect the freedom of speech, there are many government and privately funded projects set up specifically for the purpose of allowing users to bypass any form of internet censorship. The rise of peer to peer networking means that every single computer, even home PC’s formerly not thought of as servers, can be used to serve up content to any other PC.
The second, slightly harder to bypass form of censorship, as implemented in China, is to have a list of banned words, and censor those on the fly. As users in China request a web page, the incoming page is first inspected by government servers, and blocked if a banned term like democracy is present on that page. Human censors are also actively looking at what people browse on the internet, and actively block websites as they see fit. This method is also easily bypassed by connecting to a proxy server which scrambles the page as it sends it to you. Take a look at the links listed at the bottom for many other ways to bypass internet censorship, or just do a google search to bring up a few hundred thousand websites which will tell you how.
So, what exactly does it mean to block a website? Can it even be done with today’s technology?
Simply put, with current technology the only way to restrict information on the Internet is to ban it all together. There is no middle way – the technology is just not there today. One good example is China, which spends billions of dollars, and employs over 40,000 full time government employees in Beijing alone to monitor and restrict Chinese usage of the internet. The Chinese government tries to control and restrict access to a wide variety of topics, such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Falun Gong, Tibet, Taiwan, pornography or democracy. Despite the most sophisticated filtering system in the world, China has failed miserably at its attempt to censor the Internet..
The Supreme Court and Government of Pakistan have obviously an extremely limited understanding of the Internet, and do not grasp what exactly they have done. They are still thinking along the lines of traditional media, made up of books, newspapers and magazines, and probably think they have blocked certain ‘bad’ issues, and that everything else will be accessible as usual.
Most, if not all people savvy enough to operate a computer are easily able to bypass any technological blocks the govt. puts up. At best, the various censorship solutions the government will implement over the next few years will discriminate between the technological haves and have-nots.
It is sad to see Pakistan walk down that same road. At best, attempts to censor the internet will give the censors a false sense of security that they are doing something, while slowing down the internet for the entire country, as well as further degrading its image throughout the world.
The internet, although a network in name and geography, is a creature of the computer, not the traditional network of the telephone or television industry. It will, indeed it must, continue to change and evolve at the speed of the computer industry. Trying to impose artificial barriers on the internet is akin to building sand castles on the beach – sand walls can’t stop the spray of information coming over the walls, and the next wave of technology will completely overwhelm the entire castle.
In the future, technology will enable governments to control the creation and flow of information. The slippery slope to George Orwell’s 1984 starts here, when we allow governments control of what we can see, read and watch. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and once the censorship drive to ban all bad things starts; it’s a hard animal to stop.
Actually it’s very much accessible, I m accessing from Pakistan !
It may not be accessible from PTCL network. I could access it from Nayatel.
I am using Cyber net DSL in Karachi and I can access the site without any problems.
I’m accessing this via Maxcom, so not sure what’s up with the whole “banned” thing. But well-written!
WiredPakistan.com Found Guilty of High Treason!
They saw, they judge, they punish. Even Allah give chance to explain on Judgment day and He will do justice. But gods-on-land (especially in Pakistan) doesn’t need to fear from Allah. Maybe these gods-on-land have some other plan of bribing or some secret passage on Judgment Day? Do they even believe and fear from Judgment Day?
Is that the way of democratic Pakistan? Looks like no matter what political government in Pakistan we had, have, or will have; bureaucracy has the supreme power in Pakistan.
I saw scroll on Geo TV, “11 websites banned by PTA because they were publishing material against state”.
I am still wondering which website (hosted on this IP) by KO could be the culprit for “treason against state”? I have no answer because there is none but that’s my point of view.
There is no doubt in my mind that people in “power” don’t want to let Pakistani people to even “think” or have any thought in our mind. We are like bondage blind-folded nation and we are forced to eat whatever garbage is forced into our mouths. There is a saying “garbage in, garbage out”.
Somebody in “power” in PTA (PTCL or government) is definitely not happy that few hundred persons from Pakistan are able to discuss ISPs, ISPs’ performance and looting by ISPs in Pakistan. Oh! this is the state crime to even think “are we being robbed?!?!”.
Dear KO, there could be many ways, but currently I see only two major ways to handle this situation.
1) Delete all threads and posts against PTCL, other ISPs and PTA. And post many “praising” poems, articles for PTA, PTCL and other ISPs in Pakistan. We can help you to translate many poems and articles from Russian (USSR era). Communist Russia had invested a lot in praising their “great leaders”. So we can have much material handy. I am also willing to write articles to praise our “great leaders” at PTA.
[i]“Oh! our beloved great leaders of PTA, guide us, we are blind without you”[/i]
2) Second way is difficult and it is always difficult (as history tell us). Take a stand KO, I am with you, we all are with you. Most of visitors of WiredPakitan.com are techs and this idiotic ban is nothing more than a work of 30 seconds. We can teach other visitors of WiredPakistan.com to how to use workaround against these bans.
But wait, I don’t think “they” will sit calmly after ban. I won’t, if mine and my family’s “Europe tour” and my bank-balance is in jeopardy by some stupid gathering of few people on a website. Dear KO, I hope that things do not escalate but “they” can even “contact” you to take down the website. And you know the “contact”’s nature in Pakistan. These things are common in Pakistan.
In the end, I would quote a poem:
[i]Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah![/i]
We all know who is “king” here and who is “pope” here.
God bless you KO. At least you had thrown a stone to disturb the smelly water of this dirty pond (gutter). We all are with you.
Fe-Aman Allah.
Unable to access it from any of the ISP (Netsolir, Qubexs, WOL & PTCL) I have in Pakistan but can access it from US. Its being hosted outside of Pakistan, thats why no issues accessing it from outside.
=================================================================
14 66-29-53-154.site5.com (66.29.53.154) 26.875 ms 28.688 ms 28.159 ms
=================================================================
From Karachi, Pakistan
=================================================================
5 * 22 ms 13 ms gw01-backbone.kar.netsolir.com [203.170.64.1]
6 58 ms 43 ms 13 ms se3-1-4-0.khi77.pie.net.pk [202.125.131.233]
7 * * * Request timed out.
=================================================================
Right now accessing from Kproxy.com.
It is only blocked on ISP’s who get bandwidth passing through PIE.
PIE is still expanding it’s services to cover all incoming bandwidth to Pakistan, but isn’t there yet, so the website is still accessible through some ISP’s in Pakistan.
I haven’t heard back from the PTA yet about why they’ve banned this website.
About the IP address – I own it, and all the websites associated with it, so they’re all now banned in Pakistan. That’s very annoying.
What did you guys do?
I mean fine its a good forum. but i could mark it for crap. They must have load time on their hand to ban this dumb forum.
It’s not working my PTCL but it’s working fine on my Wateen connection.This is totally ridiculous.By the way Oey, i guess you are banned member of WiredPakistan or maybe a member of PTA..
I do agree with Oey’s comments about having too much free time on their hands to go about banning random websites, especially ones with as little traffic as this one.
Well, I have installed proxy for wiredpakistan on my server..adfree etc.Infact, it will open wiredpakistan homepage automatically when you open it.It’s hosted on my dedicated server so it’s pretty fast.Now users can access WiredPakistan from http://wiredpakistan.info
Thanks,
S
I can’t access it from WOL dial-up.
PTA is low, cheap, and stupid. That’s all I can say for them.
@SECC, thanks for setting up the proxy.
Thanks SECC for the proxy.
I can’t access it on dancom
I was also unable to access website for few days, then i use Google web translator whether the website is working. It was working. Then a few days and uptill now i am able to acess the website.
now your site not banned. i have access it. but still blogspot banned.
It was working. Then a few days and uptill now i am able to acess the website.
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I’m Visiting this site from pakistan i havn’t any problem . in-fact i am using DSL Connection Of PTCL
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