Pakistan Joins The Axis Of NoTube; Screws Up The Internet

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Mon, Feb 25th 2008 12:50am — Mike Masnick

Some news stories really make you wonder if politicians ever think their actions through. It's as if they don't realize that anything they do might have a reaction that nullifies the point of the action in the first place. An example of this would be the repeated ridiculous attempts by various countries to ban YouTube entirely. We've already seen it happen in Brazil, Turkey, Morocco and Thailand. In every case, it was over some random video that the government (or a judge) found offensive. Yet, in calling for the entire site to be blocked, the effort only called a lot more attention to the offending videos, while also pissing off the much larger population of folks who were using YouTube to look at other content. The latest to join this crowd would be Pakistan, who quietly ordered ISPs to block YouTube without making any kind of public announcement. Of course, in doing so, the ISP PCCW that serves many countries throughout Asia accidentally blocked YouTube in many other countries as well -- and apparently directed a barrage of unwanted traffic at a Pakistani site, basically knocking Pakistan off the internet for a bit. Oops. Given how little previous bans of YouTube succeeded in preventing interest in these "offensive" videos, does Pakistan actually think it will work this time?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: ban, pakistan, youtube

32 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

SteveD, 25 Feb 2008 @ 2:29am

Offensive to Islam
To be honest, its less about effectiveness and more about the Goverment being seen to do something.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Reech, 25 Feb 2008 @ 4:30am
  
  Re: Offensive to Islam
  If that was true surely they would have made some kind of public announcement.
  
  Anyway - someone needs to tell these fools that the cat is out the bag, and long gone.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Reech, 25 Feb 2008 @ 4:30am
  
  Re: Offensive to Islam
  If that was true surely they would have made some kind of public announcement.
  
  Anyway - someone needs to tell these fools that the cat is out the bag, and long gone.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
mike allen, 25 Feb 2008 @ 3:20am

mmmm
Why do they think they can influence how other people think.
the outage even affected us here in the UK for about 2 hours. Just enforces my views on Islam which i wont print here ( techdirt would be banned in several countries.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Jesse McNelis, 25 Feb 2008 @ 4:30am
  
  Re: mmmm
  Just enforces my views on Islam which i wont print here
  Are these view similar to my views on christianity or any other organisation where thinking is frowned upon?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - mike allen, 25 Feb 2008 @ 6:03am
    
    Re: Re: mmmm
    quite possibly keep on thinking free
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lalo, 25 Feb 2008 @ 3:32am

Comment
Seems like people having the ability to post uncensored news is too scary for othe governments
http://www.tech-exposed.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 3:36am
  
  Re: Comment
  Given what's happened to wikileaks, you're probably more right then you know. It wasnt china or pakistan that shut down wikileaks... it was the USA.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 5:07am

Worries me about having a Muslim in office...

How Islamics would react.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 5:24am

Get a clue, folks!
The article isn't about the Muslims! It is about how a over-reacting government tried to repress the people and got caught. Why does this have to always be about the [insert religious belief here].
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Yangyang (profile), 25 Feb 2008 @ 5:34am
  
  Re: Get a clue, folks!
  Because these over-reacting governments often use religion as the reason for the repression of their people.
  Some religions repress women, some repress homosexuals, some repress both and other groups. There are few, if any, religions out there which are not into repression in some form or another.
  I guess religions do not like people to think. Otherwise these thinkers would soon come to see their religion for what it is. Emptiness to fill the void of the meaning of life. Personally, i prefer Monty Python's take on that theme.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Wayne, 25 Feb 2008 @ 8:25am
  
  Re: Get a clue, folks!
  Well mostly it is about religion because the reason YouTube was banned in Pakistan was an offensive video that contained ""blasphemous" content and material considered offensive to Islam". So yes in this case it is about Muslims and Religion.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Peter Taffs, 25 Feb 2008 @ 5:44am

wrong headline
The story is that a high tear ISP (PCCW) breaks the Internet for everyone when trying to block YouTube at the request of a particular government. PCCW obviously must respond to the request but should not have allowed the change to propergate to other routers. Did they redirect the URL or block the IP address?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
syn-ack, 25 Feb 2008 @ 6:06am

Misplaced blame
PCCW is not to blame if you read the stories. A smaller Pakistani ISP send the routes upstream.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/
The bigger question is how will global telecoms continue to provide services to these countries? There's a certain level of trust needed with BGP route advertisements, etc.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Overcast, 25 Feb 2008 @ 6:13am

Oh, blocking a site is always so effective on the internet - I'm sure there are no more like it!

That's ok, I'm sure users in Pakistan will now become familiar with what a 'proxy' is.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rich Kulawiec, 25 Feb 2008 @ 7:33am

Re: Anonymous @ 8
You're "worried about having a Muslim in office"? Please tell me you haven't been so abysmally stupid as to fall for the disparaging chain letters going around discussing Senator Obama. This is fear-mongering nonsense, of course, but it seems to play very well with those of limited intellectual ability.
It's also wrong. The man's a Christian, and has been for decades. See, for example: Barack Obama - Wikipedia which reads in part:
A theme of Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address, and the title of his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope", was inspired by his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In Chapter 6 of the book, titled "Faith," Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his Kenyan father as "raised a Muslim," but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his Indonesian stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." The chapter details how Obama, in his twenties, while working with local churches as a community organizer, came to understand "the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change":
"It was because of these newfound understandings -- that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved -- that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized."
He joined Trinity in 1988. A megachurch with 10,000 members, Trinity United Church of Christ is the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ.
So if you want to be concerned that the man's a devout Christian, fine, be concerned about that -- because it's REAL. But this feeble whispering campaign is odious and reflects very poorly on the bigots, liars, and fools propagating it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- MRBILL, 25 Feb 2008 @ 7:50am
  
  Re: Re: Anonymous @ 8
  What has the comment made by the person about Muslims in the office have to do with Mr. Obama? I like the man but he probably won't be able to get elected due to all of the racist people in this country. If he does get elected then all of us will have to protect him from the boys of the south. I just want to see a good person stay safe.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rich Kulawiec, 25 Feb 2008 @ 8:01am

Re: Re: Anonymous (@ 16, MrBill)
It's the precise language being used in the whispering campaign -- in chain letters and in blogs and elsewhere. Never too specific, never showing the courage to come right out and engage in a smear, but just enough to tweak bigotry and prejudice in those susceptible to it.

I can't stand stupid, so my approach to this is slap the morons promoting it -- hard. They deserve it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 8:04am

I love the fact that no one in the religious world seems to realise that blocking "offensive to my religion" content, or trying to ban it or otherwise cover it up, just makes them all appear weak and scared.

Surely any religion, or group, that is comfortable with its beliefs and practices, can defend their beliefs without having to resort to simply banning any criticism / offensiveness? What happened to just saying "Ok, whatever you say" and getting on with life?

They're all cowards. All religions always have been, and they always will be, because they're terrified of losing control.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 8:16am

If you think the biggest issue or the biggest problem Pakistan has is their govt.'s blocking of YouTube, you really have no clue at all what life is like there.

Oh, and there is a small difference between the catholic church protesting something because you don't agree with the message and chopping someone's head off because you don't agree with them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Rich Kulawiec, 25 Feb 2008 @ 9:45am
  
  Re: Anonymous Coward @19
  Oh, I quite agree. Peaceful protests are one thing, imprisonment, torture, abuse and execution are quite another. Say...you wouldn't happen to have heard of "The Inquisition", would you? Or "The Crusades"? Or -- rather more recently -- about the epidemic of child sexual abuse by priests?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
J Brown, 25 Feb 2008 @ 9:18am

Call in technical help from India
Before Pakistan becomes even more of a 3rd world country, get some help from India. Also ask your Pakistani leaders why India and Pakistan, which were essentially one country a long time ago, are going in opposite directions. Who the hell gives a shit about Pakistan anyway?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 10:18am

Rich, you like living in the past? I agree, the priests should have been thrown in jail, why did the parents take their case to the church instead of the police?

Inquisition? Crusades? This is 2011, just because some in the muslim world want to live in the stone ages doesn't mean we should join them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Brian, 25 Feb 2008 @ 11:20am

Muslin Governments
Their like communism, control the people. I'm a white conservative southern fella, Whose Voting for Obama. Obama is christian, I hate misinformation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rich Kulawiec, 25 Feb 2008 @ 11:38am

Re: @23
It's actually 2008, but that aside: I study the past so that I can live in the future. And one of the things I've learned is that if you step back far enough, you can see that there is really no difference in the conduct of any organized religion: when it suits their purposes, they're quite willing to do anything to sustain their power and influence. Sometimes that's via political means; sometimes it's economic; and other times it's by execution. Which one isn't determined by predilection, but by expediency.

From what I sit, there is little effective difference between (to pick a couple of contemporary examples) the Taliban (still alive and well, by the way) and the Westboro Baptist Church. Yes, their behaviors are occasionally different, but that's only due to externally imposed constraints. If you actually pay attention to what they're saying -- the message is the same.

So please don't pretend that Christianity or Judaism or any other primitive superstitious nonsense is somewhere more civilized than Islam. They're not. Any temporary appearance to the contrary is just a momentary aberration -- a brief interruption in a pattern that's been sustained for millenia.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Slippy Lane, 25 Feb 2008 @ 11:47am

The far more important point is that now any malicious government or telco knows how to take down whole swathes of interpipes.

Scary
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 1:42pm

Rich, I agree with your point, but I think that if you limit it to religion, you are just blowing smoke. All groups, be it religious, political, tribel or grouping does what you say.

Its not religions fault, it is mans fault.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rich Kulawiec, 25 Feb 2008 @ 2:01pm

Re: @27
Oh, I'm well aware of this -- didn't I mention that I'm a student of history? There's a significant difference between, let's say, political or economic or ethnic groups and religious groups. Yes, you can get people fairly worked up over those former differences -- sometimes, you can get them worked up enough to kill in large numbers, to go war, to commit genocide, if you work at it.
But if you really want to unleash the worst that people have -- then use religion. There's nothing like invoking the authority of a god (or gods) to keep human beings going at it for millenia. As we see every day, looking around the world -- even wars that go on for decades are trifling, temporary skirmishes compared to conflicts based on religious differences.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 2008 @ 7:30pm

Youtube was most likely banned because a Dutch politican named Geert Wilders is shooting a movie. This movie will be about how the holy islamic book is a fascist book and why the islam is a fascist religion. This movie is supposed to air somewhere in march.
This is the information that the Dutch government is supplying about this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Feb 2008 @ 7:01am

Rich, but just because religion is used doesn't mean that is the cause. Get rid of religion and the excuse will just be something different. Focusing on America, what wars have we fought that were religious? WWI? WWII? Korea? Vietnam? Iraq I and II? I just don't see it.

We may be in a religious war right now, but that is our our enemy sees it, not America.

Religion, just like politics, is used for some groups to gain power. It doesn't cause it, but humans turn it into that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Matt, 20 May 2010 @ 4:28am

Pakistan
so they can stone and beat women, and kill innocent people with bombs but they cannot handle a cartoon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Matt, 20 May 2010 @ 4:32am

Pakistan
so they can stone and beat women, and kill innocent people with bombs but they cannot handle a cartoon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]