Pakistan Blocks 'Blasphemous' Facebook, YouTube

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Pakistan Blocks 'Blasphemous' Facebook, YouTube

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered the blocking of YouTube on Thursday and Facebook on Wednesday because of "blasphemous" material. According to The Wall Street Journal, the ban has been lifted on YouTube after some videos were removed. It's not clear which content was to blame, but the Facebook ban is still in effect.

In 2007, YouTube was similarly blocked in some Islamic countries because of videos that offended some Muslims.

'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day'

The Facebook ban resulted from an order by the Lahore High Court, which followed a petition to the court by a lawyer representing Pakistan's largest religious party.

On Wednesday, PTA told Internet service providers in that country to block the popular Facebook site because of an online contest called Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. A representative of Nayatel, a Pakistani ISP, told news media that Facebook and YouTube accounted for about 25 percent of all Net traffic in Pakistan.

According to a Pakistani Foreign Office spokesperson, caricatures of Muhammad were published on Facebook, and he called it an "extremely sensitive and emotional matter for Muslims." He added that these "malicious and insulting attacks hurt the sentiments of Muslims around the world and cannot be accepted under the garb of freedom of expression."

Facebook has said the content doesn't violate its guidelines, but it's considering making the offensive content inaccessible in Pakistan. The creators of the competition page, which has more than 90,000 followers, said their intent isn't to be disrespectful, but to challenge extremists.

Ironically, by cutting off all access to Facebook, the PTA also stopped access to opposition to the drawings, also on Facebook. The opposition has more than 100,000 followers.

Wikipedia, Flickr

A PTA spokesperson told news media that the agency tried to block specific URLs and was successful with about 450 of them, but the content kept showing up. An...

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