Gadgets and technologies banned by different Governments for trivial reasons

Saudi Arabia imposed a ban on Blackberry's on the ground of national security. They placed the blame on the service providers who maintain the privacy of customer messages. The RIM also took its fair share of blame. The local companies went through a grace period in which they couldn't fall in line with the decrees of the kingdom. Many other countries like India too are being restrictive on RIM for reasons which are not different.

Laser pointers were banned in Australia in an attempt to prevent mass murders when the aircrafts are under the eye. The Premier, Morris Iemma issued a warning that laser pointers will be considered as vicious weapons. He added that even carrying a classroom pointer will warrant a fine of $ 5000. This broke off when a beam was pointed at an automatic helicopter. The critics are of the opinion that the ban is imposed by ones totally out of touch with reality and implementing it would have practical difficulties.

The India Government want Nokia's push email service to wait till there is a way for the Government to track the interactions on the device.The directives on this ban were relayed by The Ministry of Home Affairs to the Department of Telecom. In 2010, there was a similar stay on RIM’s Blackberry servers

iPods and headphones were taken out of official races by USA Track and Field, the national governing body for running. They argued that highly competitive runners do not prefer to listen to music as they want to listen to their own body, competitors, and the audience. They greeted the ban on iPhones and headphones cheerfully. The intent of the ban is to help the runners concentrate on the race and not on music. It also intends to prevent some from having a competitive advantage.

Facebook incurred the wrath of many religious fundamentalists in Pakistan after it allowed the sketch of their Prophet Mohammed. A page titled "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" was up on Facebook one day, exhorting users to upload drawings of Mohammed in order to protest against the unwarranted reaction hinging on violence of extremists of Islam against ones who had made a portrait of Mohammed. It led to hundreds of images being uploaded on Facebook intended to hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims. The Pakistan Government reacted imposing a ban on Facebook.

More than one-third of the colleges in the United States have banned Napster to students who surf the internet on the college campuses. The reason is that Napster violates intellectual property rights. According to the RIAA, Napster lets its users trade MP3 files illegally and prevent its creators from enjoying the benefits of royalties. College students who use Napster were giving a hard time to college authorities before the ban. The ban is supposed to deal with the situation.

Israel banned iPad as its Wi-Fi system has its configuration maintained according to the US Standards and is not compatible with the European system which is used in Israel. This is said to cause interference in the wireless frequency and lead to serious problems when it comes to access. The ministry spokesman said that the products sold in the country should maintain its standards, rules and regulations. The techies in the country are understandably angry over the ban.

Imagine a life without cellphones? For many of us, it would be unspeakably unbearable as we all are so used to a life with cellphones. Cellphones have made our life convenient in many obvious ways. We may not even know how to deal with it if cell phones were banned. However, North Korea had a ban on cellphones after the explosion in Ryongchon. They made cellphone usage punishable by public execution. Luckily, they started lifting the ban some time in 2008, starting from the capital city of Pyongyang.

Microsoft faced a huge blow when the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a section of the Department of Commerce banned Windows Vista. Windows Vista will not be allowed to be installed in the internal network of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The ban was according to the documents leaked to the Information Week. In a similar situation, the US department of transportation has banned Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7 from having an installation on their networks.

In the December of 2010, China passed a rule that all phone calls other from two state-owned networks, China Unicom and China Telecom, should be made criminal. This move was move intended to ban Skype. China is a country with a long history of Luddite policies. It had banned Twitter, Facebook and Youtube much before. Many blogs and websites of a radical nature are banned in China. Some Chinese men and women claimed that they couldn't download Skype, but that doesn't seem to be the case throughout China.