ISLAMABAD: The government of Pakistan has decided to keep the ban on YouTube for an indefinite period after a secret trial opening of the video-sharing website in November, a top official of the Ministry of Information Technology disclosed.
The official said that the website was opened for only four hours in the last week of November but the ministry was flooded with complaints about the availability of blasphemous content.
“The website was closed again immediately to prevent any political backlash,” explained Muhammad Yawar Jameel, who serves the Ministry’s National Information Technology Board as the Project Manager.
Yawar made the disclosure in a roundtable discussion on the social media organised by the Planning Commission on its premises here on Saturday. Yawar admitted that majority of Internet users were able to access the YouTube through proxy servers and VPNs.
The world’s largest video sharing website has been banned in Pakistan since September 2012 when the then prime minister ordered its shutdown over its failure to take down a controversial anti-Islam movie that sparked protests around the world.
However, when contacted, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Ismail Shah said that he was not aware of the secret trial conducted by the IT Ministry. To a question, he said the ban on YouTube will stay as long as the issue of the blasphemous content was unresolved.
“Currently, it is not possible to selectively block the blasphemous content as the YouTube server is based in the United States,” he said. When asked why the PTA had failed to install filters to block only blasphemous content from YouTube, Shah said there was no such filter currently available in the world.
He said one possible solution to the issue was to locally host YouTube in Pakistan, which was only possible when Pakistan introduced a law on the Internet intermediary liabilities. He said the government was also waiting for the direction of the Supreme Court on the issue.
But the advocates of Internet freedom are strongly criticising the government over its failure to restore YouTube, which could promote education, culture and small business in the country.”
The ban on YouTube is an act of criminal negligence by the government, as people are resorting to insecure means of accessing the website,” said Shahzad Ahmad, Country Director Bytes for All, an NGO working for Internet freedom in Pakistan.
“In the absence of straightforward access to YouTube, the people are using proxies and VPNs for the purpose, which could expose them to Internet frauds and malwares,” he said.
Internews
