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The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked Wikipedia after slowing entry to the web site for 48 hours over content material it considers “sacrilegious.” A PTA spokesperson instructed Bloomberg that the company has blocked the net encyclopedia for failing to take away mentioned content material inside the previous couple of days.
The telecom authority revealed on February 1st that it approached the web site with a court docket order to take away “blasphemous” materials from its web site. After Wikipedia did not comply or seem earlier than authorities, the PTA degraded entry to the web site for a few days and threatened to dam it solely if it did not adjust to its calls for. The company did not publicly checklist the Wikipedia entries it does not need individuals in Pakistan to see.
Wikipedia was approached for blocking/elimination of the mentioned contents by issuing a discover below relevant regulation & court docket order(s). A chance of listening to was additionally supplied, nonetheless, the platform neither complied by eradicating the blasphemous content material nor appeared earlier than the Authority. pic.twitter.com/6dWRcbxHGB
— PTA (@PTAofficialpk) February 1, 2023
As TechCrunch notes, Pakistan has been making an attempt to exert extra management over content material discovered on numerous digital platforms. In 2020, the PTA briefly banned TikTok resulting from “immoral and indecent” materials earlier than the short-form video app promised to reasonable clips based on Pakistani “societal norms” and legal guidelines. It is value noting that the Muslim-majority nation has stringent blasphemy legal guidelines, and the punishment for breaking them consists of life imprisonment and even dying.
In a weblog publish, the Wikimedia Basis confirmed that Pakistan blocked Wikipedia and different Wikimedia initiatives primarily based on its inside visitors reviews. “In Pakistan, English Wikipedia receives greater than 50 million pageviews per 30 days, adopted by Urdu and Russian Wikipedias. There may be additionally a large and engaged group of editors in Pakistan that contribute historic and academic content material. A block of Wikipedia in Pakistan denies the fifth most populous nation on the planet entry to the biggest free information repository. If it continues, it’s going to additionally deprive everybody entry to Pakistan’s information, historical past, and tradition,” the Basis wrote. It is now calling on Pakistan’s authorities to revive entry to the Wikipedia web site within the nation.
PTA’s spokesperson instructed Bloomberg that the company continues to be in talks with Wikipedia officers and that the company will contemplate unblocking the web site if it fully removes sacrilegious content material.
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