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WordPress ban
[DAWN] THE night before celebrations of Pakistain Day, March 23, news began to spread on Twitter that Pak internet users were not being able to access WordPress, arguably the world's most popular and widely used free blogging and publishing platform and content management system. Thousands of Paks use WordPress to host their blogs, and many software developers use WordPress tools to create websites as part of their business activities.Quickly, users began to speculate that the Pakistain Telecommunications Authority (PTA) had blocked WordPress blogs for reasons of "security" relating to Pakistain Day, and that the threat was so grave it couldn't even be elucidated. Instead of clarifying their position, PTA claimed they had not blocked WordPress, even though customers of several major ISPs posted screenshots of the block page they got on their browsers when attempting to access the main WordPress site. The move was seemingly reversed within two days, but there's no guarantee it can't happen again in the future. Pakistain's internet users are still sore from the YouTube ban, which is now three years old. The government just last month stated that YouTube was to remain blocked "indefinitely" because experts had failed to find a way to filter out "blasphemous" content. People have found ways to get around the ban by using VPNs, or virtual private networks, which disguise a Pak IP and allow access to material the government deems too 'offensive' for them to view. But this regressive way of dealing with information in the digital age, by blocking and censoring it completely, has offended many internet users who resent this infringement on their right to access other, valuable information that YouTube provides -- chemistry lectures, religious talks, children's educational programmes. And the short interruption to WordPress was a sharp reminder that Pak citizens' digital rights are not guaranteed. Posted by: Fred 2015-03-26 |
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