Pakistan investigates YouTube blockage
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and Robin Kwong in Hong Kong
Published: February 26 2008 23:47 | Last updated: February 26 2008 23:47
Pakistan’s government on Tuesday said it had launched an investigation into whether its move to block traffic to the YouTube website may have caused a global outage.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, said on Monday that many of its users globally could not access the site for about two hours on Sunday because of an error caused by Pakistan’s efforts to block domestic access to the site.
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Abdullah Riar, Pakistan’s information technology minister, on Tuesday said that if there was any global fallout from the government’s efforts to block YouTube, it “was completely unintentional”.
Mr Riar said the decision to block YouTube in Pakistan was taken at government level following concerns that the appearance of what was deemed to be blasphemous material could provoke a backlash from hardline Muslims.
“We have a difficult situation in our country. If we had not stopped YouTube there would have been a bigger backlash. We have seen such reaction in the past,” he said.
Pakistan officials are thought to have sought to block a clip on YouTube about a forthcoming film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a critic of Islam. In 2005, the publication of caricatures of Mohammad in Danish newspapers sparked protests in several Muslim countries, including Pakistan. In recent weeks, protests have occurred again after one of the cartoons was reprinted.
The wider problem appears to have occurred when Pakistan Telecommunications, the country’s largest operator, sought to enforce the government ban.
According to reports, a command to reroute all Pakistani web traffic destined for YouTube was accidentally replicated by one of its upstream providers, Hong Kong-based PCCW, causing traffic to the site across much of the world to be redirected to a so-called “black hole” for about two hours on Sunday. PCCW said on Tuesday that it was investigating what had happened but declined to elaborate.
Mr Riar said the government was working to refine its ability to censor the internet. It will acquire new equipment for its internet exchanges within weeks “to selectively block [more specific addresses] if those are found offensive”.
“Now,” he said, “we have to block the whole website because we don’t have the technology to selectively block URLs.”
Late on Tuesday, Pakistan lifted its restrictions on YouTube, authorising the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to inform internet service providers to restore access to the site after the clip was removed.
