Pakistan and The Internet Part 2: YouTube

For two hours on Sunday, February 24th, YouTube went offline. This wasn’t a deliberate attack or even internal maintenance gone wrong. The outage was an apparent accident, caused by a botched attempt at censorship by the Pakistani government.

News.com reports that Pakistan was attempting to block YouTube internally because of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed hosted on the website. Officials feared these cartoons could cause political unrest in Pakistan. The Pakistani Telecommunications Authority attempted to block access to YouTube by routing all requests for the site to “erroneous protocols,” essentially sending all would-be YouTube visitors to blank pages. Whether or not they intended to do so, this censorship scheme effected the entire world, causing widespread confusion as YouTube vanished for two hours.

After learning of Pakistan’s objection, YouTube removed the offending video, and has since come back online in Pakistan and the rest of the world.

• Pakistan is not the first country to block access to YouTube and similar sites. How can citizen journalists tell their stories when their main outlets become inaccessible?
• Should sites like YouTube be held responsible for hosting potentially offensive material?
• Does the apparent ease with which Pakistan knocked out YouTube shine a light on the risk of cyberwar and cyberterrorism?

YouTube Blames Pakistan for 2-Hour Outage

How Pakistan Knocked YouTube Offline (and How to Make Sure It Never Happens Again)

Pakistan Welcomes Back YouTube

Pakistan and The Internet Part 1: The New York Times

Pakistan has been in the news quite a bit recently, and for those looking in the right places, a lot of this news has dealt with the internet and citizen journalism. I’m going to address two relevant stories in my next two posts: a New York Times effort to work with citizen journalists, and an attempt by the Pakistani government to silence the same critical individuals.

In November, the Times put out “a call for eyewitness photos, video, and text from Pakistan.” This request was intended to help the Times report on opposition protests being blocked by the Pakistani government. Users were encouraged to submit personal accounts as comments and to contact the Times with photo and video submissions. While there were a few videos linked in the comments, most responses seemed to come in text form, whether they were personal accounts or critiques of the Times’ coverage.

• Was this intended journalistic partnership successful for all parties involved?
• What does the most common response medium (text) say about the kinds of stories being told and the people telling them?

Come back soon for the Pakistan-YouTube debacle.

“A Call for Eyewitness Photos, Video and Text From Pakistan”