So, just yesterday we wrote about Pakistan’s decision to block all of Facebook, because some users had set up a page for “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” (in response to the threats made to Comedy Central concerning an episode of South Park). Originally, just that one page had been banned, but apparently that wasn’t enough, and a court ordered the entire site should be banned for allowing that sort of content to appear. In response, I asked if Pakistan would ban the internet if a page was put up advocating the same thing. It looks like the country may be trying to ban services one-by-one.
Now it’s been announced that Pakistan is blocking access to YouTube over the same issue. Of course, Pakistan tried to block YouTube a few years ago, and it ended up taking down a large chunk of the internet — so hopefully this time they’ve come up with a more sophisticated way of doing this. In the meantime, though, I’m still at a loss for how completely banning a site makes sense here, but it appears my original post somehow is being spread around Pakistan, because starting not so long ago there was a sudden rush of comments coming from people in Pakistan, defending the blocking decisions. Given that, how long until Techdirt gets blocked as well?
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