IP Democracy: YouTube Felled by Pakistani Censors

It's one thing when a government censors what its own people can access on the Internet, but it's another thing altogether to block the entire world's access to content. That's what happened earlier today when Pakistani censors, fiddling around with content filters, ended up hijacking YouTube's web server address, shutting down global access to the hugely popular site.

Pakistani authorities were supposedly trying to block access to YouTube because the site featured the famed Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammad that many Muslims find offensive. A trailer for a film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which isn't favorable to Islam, was also cited as a reason for shutting off the popular video sharing site. Check out this statement by Reporters Without Borders condemning the country's move to ban YouTube.

The global shut-down of YouTube was by all accounts an accident by the engineers implementing the filter. Still, it goes to show that messing with the Internet is almost never a good idea.

As an aside, I was hunting for videos from Saturday Night Live's most recent broadcast, its first non-repeat in many months, when I had trouble connecting to YouTube. I assumed that something was wrong with my Internet connection or computer or both. But the folks on Twitter let me know right away that they too had trouble with YouTube and I knew then that something was up.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post stated that Turkey, not Pakistan, was the culprit in shutting down YouTube. This mistake was a result of blogging during the Oscars. Apologies.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on February 25, 2008 12:55 AM to IP Democracy