Pakistan had blocked the access of YouTube in Pakistan on September 17th, 2012 after blasphemous videos had surfaced on video sharing website.
YouTube had blocked the access of blasphemous videos in various countries, including Egypt, Libya, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and India, however, it didn’t block the videos in Pakistan in response to which government had to block the entire website through local ISPs.
Pakistan, through Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, reached out to YouTube to get the access of anti-Islam videos blocked in the country, but all such requests were reportedly not entertained.
It merits mentioning here that YouTube has this ability to blocked the access of certain videos in certain countries. It also has the technology to block all copies of a video (which are uploaded by different users) and all its replicas, which is otherwise not possible through URL filtering at local ISPs level, as users were uploading videos with new accounts every other day, and hence it was almost impossible for local ISPs to completely eliminate the chances of availability of blasphemous videos.
Due to Malala Yousafzai incident, the issue of blockade of YouTube had gone in the background, which is now again brought back to discussion by the media.
Some experts believe that Government is trying only half-heatedly to bound YouTube to get the blasphemous videos blocked in Pakistan. They opine that blocked YouTube is better for the political government for reasons known to everyone.
