YouTube could become available to people in Pakistan again soon. Interior Minister Rehman Malik has been looking for a way to unblock it for about a month. Today he tweeted that they’re planning to unblock the site within a day.
I chaird a high level mting w/all stakeholders on the Utube.Gud job by PTA 2 block anti iIslamic material!Pl xpect Utube unblocked in 24hrs
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) December 28, 2012
At this point there does seem to be a bit of debate about exactly what Malik meant by his tweet. As you can see in the comments below, one person did ask him to clarify.
As ValueWalk reported in September, the Cabinet decided to block YouTube 100 days ago right after the massive riots in Pakistan which erupted in response to a clip from a film that contained anti-Islamic content. We also reported on the unblocking of YouTube for a few hours by certain Pakistani internet service providers earlier this month.
YouTube reportedly received requests from several countries to remove the controversial film from its site or just to block that film from their countries. YouTube, which is a subsidiary of Google, refused to remove the film, although it did block access to it in Indonesia, Malaysia and India after those countries’ governments requested that it do so.
Google also blocked Brazil, Libya and Egypt from accessing the film. However it did not block access in Pakistan, so the nation’s government decided to block the entire YouTube site. Sudan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan also blocked the entire YouTube site when Google refused to block access to it in those countries.
The White House requested twice that YouTube remove the controversial film, but it denied those requests after saying that the film wasn’t in violation of its rules.
After the tweet about unblocking YouTube, Malik tweeted again, this time pointing to a firewall the government is working on obtaining that would block “pornographic and blasphemous material.”
PTA is finalizing negotations for acquiring a powerful firewall software to totally block pornographic and blasphemous material.
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) December 28, 2012
Such a firewall could have an even broader impact on what Pakistanis can and can’t view on the Internet.
