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25 Feb 2008
The Pakistan government has ordered all ISPs operating in the country to block YouTube.
The edict came amid protests relating to controversial Danish cartoons allegedly defaming Islam which were republished by some Danish media last month.
Protestors burnt Danish and American flags and an effigy of the Danish prime minister in Karachi.
"They asked us to ban it immediately ... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice," Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers, told Reuters.
"Users are screaming at ISPs which cannot do anything. The government has a valid reason, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular sites, people will stop using the internet."
A knock-on effect from the ban caused some worldwide problems for YouTube. Google, the site's owner, said that the site was unavailable for two hours in some countries.
"Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous internet protocols, and
many users around the world could not access our site," Google said in a
statement.
"We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan.
We are investigating and working with others in the internet community to
prevent this happening again."
The cartoons were first published in 2006 and caused riots in Muslim countries worldwide. Over 100 people were killed and the Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran were burnt out.
The images were republished by media outlets the day after police foiled a plot to kill the cartoonist as a statement on freedom of expression.
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Do you agree?
A little over the top.
Bloody hell, why can't people just realise they don't have to block it? If it's just a collection of videos on YouTube, then why can't people just NOT watch them? Granted the material is considered 'blasphemous', but so is stuff on a lot of other web sites out there. And blocking sites isn't going to make the content just 'disappear' no more than people CHOOSING not to watch the videos will. This is the internet. There is a close button on the browser. Click it. It's that simple, no need to ban entire domains over the matter. At the most, I'm sure it'd be possible to talk to the YouTube staff to get the video removed if you feel that strongly about something that no-one is being forced to watch.
Posted by: ShiroRyu 26 Feb 2008