In an attempt to control the controversies over Prophet Mohammad, Pakistan has been banning social networking and video sites left and right. It all started out with a total block of Facebook in Pakistan, which will remain in effect till May 31st or maybe longer.

The next on the line was YouTube which was again blocked because of its "growing sacrilegious content". Third in line in the ban list is Twitter, where information flows just like butter off a hot knife.

It is not the first time though that governments have used bans to curtail information or freedom, there have been blocks by China, Iran, North Korea, India and many more countries on websites which they deem as problematic. However, is banning websites the best cause of action?

Not exactly, if people want to access information they will find ways to do it, no matter how hard you try to stop them. If one solution fails, another will come up, if that fails, another. The cycle will continue and people will get what they want.

In the end, you are only giving people more eagerness to access what they cannot have. If you do need to keep away from something, the best cause of action would be to talk to the concerned websites and have the content removed, however, governments would argue that you cannot have watchdogs poring over content to find what is right or what is wrong, so just take the easy way out and ban everything in sight.

In my honest opinion, religious sentiments can often go off-hand specially when you are talking about the Internet, however, bans are often not the way to go. It is a human sentiment to want more of what is restricted, however, it is sad that such things have to happen over and over again.