Pakistan lifts YouTube ban

Government reverses order

27 February 2008 11:53 GMT / By Katie Scott

The Pakistani government has lifted a national ban on visiting YouTube.

Late last week, the country ordered Pakistani ISPs to block the video-sharing website because of content deemed offensive to Islam.

Over the weekend, alleged attempts by techies at one of Pakistan's biggest ISPs, PCCW, to follow this order resulted in a worldwide, 2-hour long YouTube outage.

The BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, said at the time that Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the website's server address then passed these on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address.

However, the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet from PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by ISPs around the world.

But now the restrictions have been lifted after a national outcry.

The BBC is reporting that the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has told ISPs to allow access to the site; and Google, which owns YouTube, has since confirmed service had been restored in Pakistan.

The BBC continues that a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative light, was behind the restrictions.

Full tags

Software, Online, Websites, YouTube, Google