Internet Law
Pakistan’s YouTube Censorship Caused Wider Outage
Posted Feb 26, 2008, 10:07 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
YouTube was inaccessible to Internet users in many countries for as long as two hours on Sunday after Pakistan blocked access in protest of a video clip it deemed to be blasphemous to Islam.
Pakistan’s telecommunications regulator filed a complaint with the website about a clip by a Dutch lawmaker who was releasing a movie accusing Islam of inciting violence against women and gays, the Associated Press reports.
Pakistan had intended to block the site only in its own country, but a technical glitch made the restriction more widespread, the New York Times reports.
The incident had Internet activists wondering how Pakistan’s action “could have such widespread reverberations—and whether such a disruption could be reproduced by someone with more malicious intent,” the newspaper says.
A spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said the video clip has been removed and Pakistan has lifted the restriction on access to the Web site.
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