Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) is happy to announce to the Pakistani bloggers that some serious progress has been made during the last few of days regarding the internet censorship (blogspot ban ) issue in Pakistan.
Google Inc.’s key representative (Policy Analyst) has been in direct contact with DBTB members in reference to the blogspot ban. We were informed that Google has been closely following the activities of DBTB and our efforts to address the issue of the blanket ban, and Google strongly supports the cause of the Pakistani bloggers.
During the exchange of emails, Omer Alvie provided a detailed picture on the history of the ban, along with highlighting the collective efforts of DBTB and Pakistani bloggers to fight this unfair blanket ban. Additionally, the serious problems regarding the new version of Blogger.com were also highlighted, along with requesting a more direct and concrete support from Google Inc. in helping resolve the current blogspot censorship issue and providing continued support for the cause of free speech in Pakistan.
In reference to our request and direct communication with Google, DBTB was contacted by the appointed representative of Google in Pakistan. Dr. Awab Alvi had a detailed meeting with the representative reiterating the need to address the Pakistani bloggers’ concerns regarding the blanket ban with the appropriate government authorities. DBTB was informed Google is hard at trying to work something out with the government and the Google (Pak) representative will try to convince the government to reevaluate the unfair blanket ban issue once and for all.
In addition, Dr. Awab also reminded the Google Representative, that in the meantime, it would best to get direct involvement from Google in configuring the pkblogs and inblogs proxy servers to be better at handling the recent upgrade to new version of Blogger.
Although the DBTB team remains optimistic with the recent developments and the direct involvement of Google to help resolve the blanket ban issue, we are also aware of the political machinations within our government which could mean that the process for a permanent resolution to the ban problem will be a slow one.
We at DBTB stand determined to continue our efforts in this regard, and hope to update you as soon as we are informed of any concrete solutions or resolutions to the blog censorship issue.
Comments
14 responses to “Don’t Block the Blog & Google”
This the same Google team that was in Islamabad a few days back interviewing university students for jobs at Google?
Well not exactly Google has a Rep in Pakistan but yes he did mention that there were two other Googlers who were in town doing interview a few days back.
Hope to get more Pakistanis into Google as I was shocked to note that it was generally a one man show in Pakistan
Perseverance pays after all. Keep it up Alvi and Alvie!
there are pakistanis working at google but there are rumours that Google is opening its office in Pakistan. By the way what are they doing in ISB? they shud be in either KHI or LHR 😀
Awab, you re doing a wonderful job. Best of luck. It means that i should not move my blog now? 😀
Adnan – Well cant be certain about the technicalities but the rep hails from Lahore and was in Karachi for 3-4 days. MY guess is Lahore being its base
Hi Awab
Is there some way to update our wordpress blogs since wordpress has been blocked as well?
I can go to my blog via a proxy server but I have been unable to post on it.Is there some way I can do that?
GJ – Can you tell me which ISP you are using to access the net, there are only a few ISP using the Trans World Network, if at all possible if you can swap ISP’s it can easily solve the issue. If you can identify the ISP it would help lead us to an investigation.
Otherwise my safest bet would be to either run through a few anaonymous servers or alternatively the safest bet would be to use TOR or PSIPHON.
Yeah, they were at my uni to see interest for new prospective Pakistani google employees. They were in a rush though. Too bad it conflicted with a 3G workshop. 🙁
Adnan, jealous? 😛 😀 j/k
About those facing trouble on wordpress, try using JAP (google it) or else try Coral Project by appending “.nyud.net:8080” to the address before the back slash. e.g.
http://www.xyz.com/test/
becomes
http://www.xyz.com.nyud.net:8080/test
Hey TM, abt the WP ban..i’m using SuperNet and i can’t access WP blogs. However, i can access ’em from SZABIST using ZABNET. I called the SuperNet people a couple of weeks ago and they said that they are going to look into this but so far nothing has been done in this regard.
I can browse wordpress blogs fine. Might be an ISP glitch.
hehe asad I could be jealous if I was a student 😀 fortunately/unfortuntely, I am not a student anymore.
It would be good[really?] if google open its office in Pakistan. All I know that people today are crazy for GOOGLE like they were crazy for Microsoft in late 80s and 90s.
I was just kidding with the jealous comment if you didn’t get my drift.
I assure you, after reading about these companies, the job and environment are more exaggerated than anything else.
However, it would be good to have their offices here. They are already in India. :{
I have been using http://bypass.thezerogroup.com
My work blocks the following pages:
ebay
myspace
youtube
dilbert
gmail
and many more
I have been using the bypass.thezerogroup.com for over 6 months without issues. I HAVE ACCESS TO ALL BLOCKED SITES – my co-workers are all very jealious
Google should not be blocked whereever possible, but if in-case the same cannot be avoided then I recommend using sites like http://voxov.com instead, it blocks most of the harmful content while giving users the same power as offered by google search.