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Pakistan Blocks YouTube

February 25th, 2008 by robert

YouTube access has been blocked in Pakistan for hosting material offensive to Islam.

Its telecommunications authority ordered internet service providers to block the site until further notice. Reports said the content included Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many. However, one report said a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative light, was behind the ban.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers said:

“They asked us to ban it immediately… and the order says the ban will continue until further notice.”

Unfortunately, the method the ISPs used to block access to YouTube was said to affect users outside Pakistan, leading to a near worldwide outage.

Thanks to the BBC for the reports.

Posted in news | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Pakistan Blocks YouTube”

  1. robert Says:
    February 25th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

    If you want to see what happened, look at instructions given in this post over on slashdot.

    Head over to this site. It visualizes the BGP routes between different AS’s. Click ‘Start BGPlay’. The prefix in which YouTube lives is 208.65.153.0/24. Set the start time for about 24 Feb 2008 10:00, and the end time for about 25 Feb 2008 03:00 (times are UTC). Start the simulation.

    You’ll see a bunch of ASNs. Two have red circles around them. You can get their name by clicking on the number. On the left is YouTube, and on the right is Pakistan Telcom. Click play and watch what happens.

    For those too lazy to actually watch this: All the routes destined for YouTube head towards Pakistan Telcom instead. Then, midway through, you see PCCW get wise and shut down those routes, and everyone slowly starts finding the actual YouTube. It’s pretty neat to watch.

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