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What Portals Need To Learn From Pakistan’s Facebook Block

Updates: The Next Web reports that the ban has been extended to Wikipedia and YouTube. Earlier today: Yesterday, Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority blocked access to Facebook following a ruling from the Lahore High Court, reports Bloomberg. At the core of the issue is a Facebook group for 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day', asking users to send in caricatures depicting Prophet Mohammed, a practice which is not allowed in Islam, and considered blasphemous by muslims. The issue and the group owe its origin to a controversy around cartoons that had been published by a newspaper in Denmark in 2005, which provoked widespread protests and condemnation in the Islamic world, and counter arguments over freedom of speech. This Facebook group appears to push the agenda of 'freedom of expression' into the realm of 'freedom to offend'. Political correctness gives some people rashes. Following the Facebook block in Pakistan, Turkish hackers have also taken down Drawmohammed.com (via Timothy Thompson). However, there's a blog active, here. But should Facebook have been blocked? We're not going there: Our take on this is not a moral one - on whether it's right to block access to offensive content. What you need to know is that as democratic and global platform as the Internet may be, access to content is still governed by the law of where the content is accessed from. You may be violating laws in a country where you have no understanding of its culture or law. You need to work with governments and lawmakers: they are…

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Founder @ MediaNama. TED Fellow. Asia21 Fellow @ Asia Society. Co-founder SaveTheInternet.in and Internet Freedom Foundation. Advisory board @ CyberBRICS

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