The world population is estimated at around 6.5 billion of which roughly one billion are on the internet. According to a report by Neilsen/NetRatings, an internet media and market research firm, at least 5.7 billion searches were conducted on a corpus of roughly 20 billion pages in January 2006. No one in their right mind would think it possible to censor such an expansive and deregulated medium but that is exactly what happened last month in the Land of the Pure. On March 2, 2006, the Supreme Court of Pakistan officially ordered sites depicting the blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet to be blocked and called to question the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) and the Pakistan Electronic and Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) regarding the censorship of these cartoons.

A website called Blogger.com – that has in recent years become one of the most popular blog hosting services on the internet – had their subdomain blogspot.com blocked when a handful of individuals posted the cartoons that were originally featured in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Chances are that soon other similar sites may also be blocked.

The internet’s very existence is an expression of its decentralised and unregulated nature. Nowhere are people as free and bold in their speech as they are on this virtual medium, masked behind a veil of anonymity. Why would any rational body try to silence the internet knowing that it will only serve to aggravate the public?

One country that has somewhat successfully restricted its people from unfettered access to the internet is the People’s Republic of China. The Great Firewall of China, as it has notoriously come to be known, is the stubborn regulatory filter for all internet traffic flowing out of China and for that it has come under much international pressure. Recently, the Chinese government imprisoned journalist Li Zhi for criticising local government officials in an online discussion group. China’s motivation for censorship is to incubate its communist roots. Needless to say, the effort to block each offending document on the internet is a futile one. The Chinese government knows it can’t stop the determined surfer from accessing these documents but their goal is to simply make the process very difficult for the average user. Censorship strategies range from blocking entire domains in some cases to blocking maybe the top 100 search results on all major search engines for suspect keywords.

Pakistan, or the Muslim community collectively, hope for a censored version of the internet by threatening to boycott entire domains. But not only would this tax the resources of all major internet companies, it would also hinder their business and challenge their abilities.

However, Pakistan’s move to censor online content does not seem to be inspired from China’s stringent online censorship policy. With the exception of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited’s (PTCL’s) previous endeavours to ban Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services in order to protect its monopoly as well as abortive attempts to block pornographic and ‘other objectionable’ websites, there have only been a handful of noticeable regulatory efforts. Ardeshir Cowasjee summed up PTCL’s attempt to monitor internet traffic in his June 8, 2003, column: “Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) established two National Access Points (NAPs) in Karachi and Islamabad intended to block internet telephony and pornographic websites. The aim of these NAPs was to direct all internet traffic in and out of the country through two PTCL-controlled gateways, fundamentally faulty and with the potential to cause catastrophic damage to the information infrastructure of the country. The NAPs have of late been replaced by the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), a subsidiary of the PTCL, and PIE is now the internet backbone provider for Pakistan with their three gateways at Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi”. Back then blocking VoIP calls served as one of the primary motives for establishing PIE in the first place.

Considering the lack of free speech and the inclination for self-censorship in the Pakistani press itself, the government’s attempts at censoring the internet seem meek by comparison. The recent move to block the blogspot.com domain, however, has managed to create an uproar amongst the relatively principled internet youth who have grown accustomed to the freedom of expression offered by the Web. These individuals comprise genuinely frustrated citizens who use the internet as a venting space, as well as those who choose to rebel simply to assert their right to free speech.

Given the raging sentiments and sensitivity of the issue at hand, the Pakistani government was obliged to block offending sites in an effort to not only comply with the political demands of the Muslim Ummah but to ally with it for economic and political reasons. However, on the technical front, it is simply not feasible to block a list of sites because that list is bound to grow ever longer given the nature of the internet. So, instead of blocking a few select sites on blogspot.com the entire domain was blocked, creating a major stir among internet evangelists. The Justice Department and Pakistani authorities, by blocking an inconsequential domain, were in turn able to generate press regarding the issue – a strategy which served to highlight Pakistan’s image as a Muslim nation in the eyes of the media. The internet authorities on the other hand were obliged to comply with the strict orders of the Supreme Court and shut down the entire domain as was technically feasible. This move raises the question: how should censorship and freedom of expression really work on the internet when faced with conflicting interests? In this case the dilemma seems to be between freedom of expression or censorship of the cartoons?

The internet’s very existence is an expression of its decentralised and unregulated nature. Nowhere are people as free and bold in their speech as they are on this virtual medium, masked behind a veil of anonymity.

In its efforts to block domains threatening its political ecosystem, China blocked Google until the company gave in by introducing a censored version of their search engine tailored specifically for China. The censorship will be a laborious, ongoing process for Google with the list of censored sites having no end and ultimately complementing China’s own brand of a censored internet. Arguably, Google sees the Chinese market as too lucrative to give up (China comprises 11 per cent of the world’s internet population). As a matter of fact, the journalist Li Zhi mentioned earlier in this article landed in jail because it was Yahoo! who gave up his identity when the Chinese authorities demanded it from them. Such is the lure of the Chinese market. Pakistan, or the Muslim community collectively, hope for a similar censored version of the internet by threatening to boycott entire domains. But not only would this tax the resources of all major internet companies, it would also hinder their business and challenge their abilities. More importantly, they would also be running counter to the decentralised, unregulated nature of the internet, threatening to strip it of its functionality and utility.

The boundaries for freedom of expression are drawn by religious, political and socio-economic tolerance at the discretion of nations, communities and the public majority. The internet is notorious for extreme phenomena ranging from child voyeurism to arcane religious cults and drawing that precarious line between what is permissible and what isn’t is really a question of beliefs and values. But the ability for each individual to choose for oneself the value system that they wish to follow is what distinguishes a free and open democratic society from a totalitarian regime such as China’s. The real world is regulated to ostensibly protect us from bad company and bad communities. On the internet, however, losing your innocence is only a click away.