Did Pakistan pull the plug on YouTube's worldwide operations?

Published on Monday 25 February 2008 21:21

THE Pakistan government has been blamed for causing a global blackout of YouTube during a botched attempt to block its own citizens accessing the site.

The government in Islamabad is said to have told internet service providers (ISP) on Friday that the clip-sharing website was off-limits due to content deemed offensive to Islam.

But experts believed attempts by at least one ISP to comply with the ban resulted in users around the world being blocked by mistake yesterday.

The offending material was not specified, but it is believed to have been a trailer for an upcoming film by Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician. He has said he plans to release an anti-Islamic film which portrays the religion as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

It is thought a two-hour global YouTube "outage" was connected to attempts by Pakistan Telecom and ISP provider PCCW to comply with the demand. To do this, the YouTube address was "hijacked" by the providers and Pakistan users attempting to access the site were redirected. But it appears the block leaked out from Pakistan, resulting in a global ban.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers, said: "They (Pakistan's telecommunications authority] asked us to ban it immediately... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice.

"(YouTube users in Pakistan] are upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything."

The block on international servers ended when engineers at YouTube, which is owned by Google, contacted PCCW.

A YouTube spokesman said: "For about two hours, traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous internet protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site.

"We have determined the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working to prevent this from happening again."

Padraig Reidy, online editor of the anti-censorship magazine, Index on Censorship, said:

"While they (the Pakistan government] may be claiming they are protecting social cohesion, I think we are looking at much darker motives.

"I think they are more interested in blocking other content on YouTube, videos of anti-government protests and, more generally, ideas that contradict theirs."

Mr Reidy said the move would make the government unpopular as the internet and television were key sources for news and information.

He added: "This has backfired on the government. The Pakistan people are already suspicious of the authorities and this just confirms that they're trying to keep them in the dark."

Other countries that have temporarily blocked access to YouTube include Turkey and Thailand. Meanwhile, China is known for its stringent control of internet content.

However, Mr Reidy said authorities in Beijing were more concerned with internal internet use. "Internally, it is controlled at a very local level. People know the rules. Once they criticise the government the controls kick in."

Mr Reidy said that this was done in a "laborious" manner by paying people to monitor blogs and message sites, intervening to redirect conversations which stray towards criticism of the government.