Pakistan pulled the plug again on YouTube just hours after unblocking the site following a months-long blackout. The order
for the censorship came directly from Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf.
Previously Ashraf in September had ordered YouTube blocked after it refused to remove the anti-Islam video. Innocence of Muslims.
Earlier on Saturday the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) notified all Internet companies to immediately unblock/restore YouTube until further notice. Interior Minister Rehman Malik had said earlier said on Twitter that the decision to
allow access again was due to huge public demand.
But hours later Ashraf, after officials had said measures were being taken to filter out blasphemous material and pornography, ordered PTA to cut access. The prime minister has issued orders to block YouTube again, a senior official in Ashraf's
office told AFP,.
The privately run Geo television network reported that Ashraf issued the orders to block YouTube after it showed a report saying blasphemous content was still accessible.
Update: Blocking continues
6th July 2013. See article
from computerworld.com
A court in Pakistan has ordered a continuation of the block on YouTube in the country, after the government argued that a removal of the ban would have implications on law and order in the country.
YouTube was banned in Pakistan in September over a controversial video clip, called Innocence of Muslims , which mocked the religious character Muhammad. The country's telecom regulator said it was blocking the entire site as it was not
able to separately block individual URLs (uniform resource locators) linking to copies of the video.
The plaintiff, Bytes For All, Pakistan, has argued that the PTA has Internet filtering technology that can now be used to selectively block individual pages.
Bytes for All had asked the court for an interim order unblocking YouTube. We wanted the government to go ahead and block the 700 to 800 URLs with the blasphemous content, and remove the block on the rest of the site.
Justice Mansoor Ali Shah of the Lahore High Court noted that the ban on YouTube is negatively impacting citizens, specially students, and asked the government to resolve the issue with information technology experts, and submit a report by July 25 on how
to deal with the blasphemous URLs and make the rest of the platform available, Ahmad said.