YouTube ban — three years on

It has now been three years since YouTube disappeared from our country’s computer screens. The Senate committee on information and technology recently recommended that the ban on the video-sharing website be lifted immediately. The committee was informed that the ban had been placed on Supreme Court orders and could not be lifted without the permission of the apex Court. Last year, another Senate committee on fundamental human rights had also advised the lifting of the ban in order to give people free access to information and entertainment. Various experts have advised the same and presented their perspectives before the court. There had been talk of reviving YouTube after making arrangements for removing blasphemous content on the website. Experts in internet technology, including the organisation Bytes for All, have pointed out that this is a virtual impossibility. YouTube itself is reluctant to allow itself to be censored in any way and attempts at agreement between it and successive federal governments have not led anywhere.

The point to be made is that the ban has deprived millions of Pakistanis of access to information, educational material and entertainment. As Senator Afrasiab Khattak has pointed out, the website has not been blocked in other Muslim countries. Yes, the content of the blasphemous video, which led to the ban in the first place, is offensive but it goes without saying that the huge majority of Pakistanis would not opt to view it if the ban on YouTube was lifted. There is plenty of other safe material on the website of benefit to students, teachers, professionals and many others. Given this, it makes no sense at all to keep the ban in place. If other nations are able to ignore offensive, insensitive material on the website, we should be able to do the same as well. Depriving people of access to YouTube causes far greater damage. A way has to be found to solve the problem and restore one of the world’s most popular websites, which has been blocked in the country since 2012 without anything that can count as solid justification.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th,  2015.

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