Pakistan Unblocks YouTube For Three Minutes

[Andy Chalk]

Pakistan Unblocks YouTube For Three Minutes

A government plan to keep blasphemous material away from Pakistani internet users didn't work out quite as planned.

The government of Pakistan imposed a nation-wide ban on YouTube in September of last year in response to the presence of "blasphemous" material on the site, in particular a trailer for Innocence of Muslims, a rabidly anti-Islamic video that caused a violent, worldwide uproar when it floated to the surface last summer. The Pakistani Prime Minister ordered the Ministry of Information to block the service in order to prevent viewing of the video after YouTube declined a White House call to remove it.

But not everyone was happy with the ban. The English-language Express Tribune called it "a naked power play" and said, "We need to make it clear that we do not wish to regress to a dark age when a centralized authority controlled all access to information." A growing number of complaints prompted Interior Minister Rehman Malik to announce on Friday that the ban would be lifted, and that internet users in Pakistan would be protected from blasphemous and pornographic content by government-installed firewalls.

Unfortunately, shortly after the ban was lifted, the "immensely influential" television news network Geo reported that anti-Islamic material was still accessible. An outcry led by Ansar Abbasi, "a right-leaning journalist" who, according to his Pakistani Leaders Online [http://www.pakistanileaders.com.pk/profile/Ansar_Abbasi] profile believes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is "the only Muslim Leader who takes real pride in being a follower of the greatest religion," caused Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf to reimpose the ban just a few hours after the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority ordered local ISPs to make it available. According to the New York Times, YouTube was accessible to the people of Pakistan for three minutes.

Malik hasn't yet commented on the turnaround but two Geo reporters criticized the move on Twitter: One posited [https://twitter.com/MansoorGeoNews/statuses/284985194912571392] that the government wanted to maintain the ban and used the report as an excuse to do so.

Source: New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/world/asia/youtube-ban-lifted-in-pakistan-for-3-minutes.html]


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[RA92]

Ugh. Our government had a huge ***** fit as well and blocked YouTube, and Google had to change their TOS right at the same time so that all those YouTube video downloading sites like ClipConverter and SaveVid had to shut down their operations. And my 'net connection is too slow for streaming through proxies. Finally found one site that still lets you convert and DL YT videos.

Seriously, fuck the government and religious zealots.

 

[IronMit]

An outcry led by Ansar Abbasi, "a right-leaning journalist" who, according to his Pakistani Leaders Online profile believes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is "the only Muslim Leader who takes real pride in being a follower of the greatest religion,"

This really went off on a tangent here. Why was it necessary to add the journalists opinion about Ahmedinejad?

Unless you were going to include a specific Iranian policy he agreed with. Just seems like an opportunity to remind us about Iran. Or supports Iran = evil...because apparently his influential status and being right wing and forcing the government to close down youtube wasn't 'evil enough'


New yorks time just wrote;

The criticism was led by Ansar Abbasi, a right-leaning journalist who often speaks out on morality and religion.

That sounds informative and not like a daily mail half-news half-opinion piece

 

[mParadox]

This happened 3 days ago! Took a bit of time to get here no? I wasn't even expecting it to be news worthy. Considering... all the things my wonderful wonderful nation does otherwise.

ON THE OTHER HAND, proxies. They work. Gotta love the lousiness of the National IT department. OR maybe, they're sympathetic to us(read: me and whoever lives here~) internet users.

 

[Jandau]

Pakistan unblocks YouTube, the entire country discovers Gangnam Style 6 months too late...

 

[LordFish]

And they want us to treat them like a civilized, modern and well balanced country. Please.

 

[mParadox]

Pakistan unblocks YouTube, the entire country discovers Gangnam Style 6 months too late...

Actually it's horrendously popular as it is. It's played everywhere by everyone. I mean the youth obviously.

... and bought home puppies.

I say! What's wrong with puppies? D:

 

[mParadox]

Dogs are taught to be unclean in Islam, if you're liked by one you must preform a ritual purification.

Are they now? Probably. That's one rule we don't really care about. Because, usefulness of dogs very much outweighs any... idea of uncleanliness.

Spoiler: Here's the downlow mate.

Key: Haraam: Forbidden.


Let me clarify a few myths and make a few points:

1. It is NOT haraam to own a dog, though it is not hygienic to keep a dog in the house.

2. It is NOT haraam to touch a dog or any other animal. If the saliva of a dog touches you or any part of your clothing, then it is required of you to wash the body part touched and the item of clothing touched by the dog?s mouth or snout.

3. It is incumbent upon all Muslims who own animals, whether for farming or work purposes or as pets, to provide adequate shelter, food, water, and, when needed, veterinary care for their animals. Arrangements must be made, if one is going to be away from home, to have one?s animals taken care of as well.

4. It is haraam to keep a dog or any other animal on a short lead for long periods without food, water, and shelter. Dogs need exercise and are social creatures who form organized ?family? structures in nature. Dog owners therefore need to spend time daily with their dogs.

5. It is cruel, and therefore haraam, to keep any animal in a cage so small that it cannot behave in a natural way.

6. Fireworks cause untold suffering to most domestic animals because of their acute sense of hearing.

7. It is haraam to participate in any blood ?sport,? like dog fighting and trophy hunting.

Or what the world knows as, General rules of pet keeping.

 

[John the Gamer]

?Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave?

?The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr?

?Do not say, that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them; and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them; but determine that if people do you good, you will do good to them; and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them?

Just some quotes attributed to Muhammed. You know, that one prophet guy that spread the word of Islam to the origional muslims.

I don't believe it myself, but these people supposedly do.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Welcome to the glorious, fun and free world Paki... oh, you've gone already?

 

[tmande2nd]

Once again we see that certain nations fear free information.

One of my friends from University is Muslim and he just laughed at the "blasphemous" material on Youtube.
Get some thicker skin already.

I mean really you DONT have the right to not be offended.
You just have the right not to listen to offensive stuff.
Change the channel, tune the radio, close the web page WALK AWAY.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Once again we see that certain nations fear free information.

One of my friends from University is Muslim and he just laughed at the "blasphemous" material on Youtube.
Get some thicker skin already.

I mean really you DONT have the right to not be offended.
You just have the right not to listen to offensive stuff.
Change the channel, tune the radio, close the web page WALK AWAY.

Now I'm not trying to say they are right in their situation in any way but would you really like it if I tailed you to every single place you visited while shouting out bad things about you to every place you ever walk to?.

Sure there's growing thick skin but that's also another way to easily go out of your way to piss people off and in turn just repeat "grow skin to my level" to get away with saying bad shit.

Some people just don't like bad shit right in their face and hell I sure as didn't love my photograph being posted all around the college walls and demanded they be pulled off and the culprit found because I chose not to walk away from that kinds of shit because you don't let people fuck you over like that.

By all means walk away for them and for anyone else but don't for a second forget the same advice if for a moment you can't walk away from almost anything ever since that's pretty much the ultimatum it brings about.

 

[lechat]

muslims need to grow up seriously. second only to scientologists noone cries more than you guys when someone insults their beliefs

if you don't like someone's opion (sp? or is it?) politely tell them to go fuck themselves or in the case of the internet don't watch the fucking thing

 

[RicoADF]

muslims need to grow up seriously. second only to scientologists noone cries more than you guys when someone insults their beliefs

if you don't like someone's opion (sp? or is it?) politely tell them to go fuck themselves or in the case of the internet don't watch the fucking thing

And how would you react if a large portion of the world hated and put down your race/culture and religion? Granted their not 100% innocent, but to be fair alot of the issue has been cause by a few that's caused hatred of a vast majority of people. Your above comment is a great example of how westerners looks down on them based on the fact their a Muslim.

Us in the west need to accept that there are those that are different to us, and that they have different views and values. The 'censorship' may be forced appon them, or it may be wanted by the population as their sick of the west condemning them and running into it all the time. We really only have our local biased news sources to tell us what's happening.

 

[lechat]

muslims need to grow up seriously. second only to scientologists noone cries more than you guys when someone insults their beliefs

if you don't like someone's opion (sp? or is it?) politely tell them to go fuck themselves or in the case of the internet don't watch the fucking thing

And how would you react if a large portion of the world hated and put down your race/culture and religion? Granted their not 100% innocent, but to be fair alot of the issue has been cause by a few that's caused hatred of a vast majority of people. Your above comment is a great example of how westerners looks down on them based on the fact their a Muslim.

Us in the west need to accept that there are those that are different to us, and that they have different views and values. The 'censorship' may be forced appon them, or it may be wanted by the population as their sick of the west condemning them and running into it all the time. We really only have our local biased news sources to tell us what's happening.

you seem to be of the opinion i dislike muslims and am discriminating against them in some way when in fact i am doing exactly the opposite. i'll state again "grow up muslims" the next time a christian comes in and starts crying that someone insulted their religion i'll tell them the same thing and the next time a scientologist starts a legal battle cause someone said their religion was stupid i'll do the same for them

if a muslim wants to block themselves off from the outside world for fear of hearing something they don't agree with they should feel free to do so but i don't think it's fair to impose the same restrictions on a whole country
what kind of ass backwards world would we live in if we couldn't openly criticize that which we don't agree with and ppl are refused access to alternate opinions for fear it might hurt their feelings or change their minds

 

[somonels]

Some of them wanted to see what the gangnam dance is so they could ban it.

 

[RicoADF]

muslims need to grow up seriously. second only to scientologists noone cries more than you guys when someone insults their beliefs

if you don't like someone's opion (sp? or is it?) politely tell them to go fuck themselves or in the case of the internet don't watch the fucking thing

And how would you react if a large portion of the world hated and put down your race/culture and religion? Granted their not 100% innocent, but to be fair alot of the issue has been cause by a few that's caused hatred of a vast majority of people. Your above comment is a great example of how westerners looks down on them based on the fact their a Muslim.

Us in the west need to accept that there are those that are different to us, and that they have different views and values. The 'censorship' may be forced appon them, or it may be wanted by the population as their sick of the west condemning them and running into it all the time. We really only have our local biased news sources to tell us what's happening.

you seem to be of the opinion i dislike muslims and am discriminating against them in some way when in fact i am doing exactly the opposite. i'll state again "grow up muslims" the next time a christian comes in and starts crying that someone insulted their religion i'll tell them the same thing and the next time a scientologist starts a legal battle cause someone said their religion was stupid i'll do the same for them

if a muslim wants to block themselves off from the outside world for fear of hearing something they don't agree with they should feel free to do so but i don't think it's fair to impose the same restrictions on a whole country
what kind of ass backwards world would we live in if we couldn't openly criticize that which we don't agree with and ppl are refused access to alternate opinions for fear it might hurt their feelings or change their minds

In that case my apologises, text didnt bring that across very well.
I agree with your last point too.