LHC refers YouTube ban case to larger bench

LAHORE: Lahore High Court (LHC) judge Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah has referred the YouTube ban case to the larger bench headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial for a hearing as this case is of high importance, Express News reported.

The court during previous hearings had remarked that it is important to understand the nature of the problem.

"In today’s digital age, information over the Internet cannot be blocked but can be intelligently regulated. There are no borders or walls that can limit this information from flowing into Pakistan unless of course the Internet is shut down completely and links with the outside world are severed," Justice Shah said.

He further added: "It appears that a sustainable answer to the problem is self regulation at the individual and house-hold level. World Wide Web has all sorts of information ranging from ‘very useful’ to ‘out right offensive’."

"The choice is ours, we can either draw upon the useful information for our national development or fall prey to the negative content and immerse ourselves into moral and cultural chaos," the judge said.

Concluding his remarks, he stated that the responsibility and the choice is of the individual whether to visit a controversial website or not as the same cannot be effectively blocked according to the level of technology present in our country today.

The court was hearing the petition filed by Bytes for All, an NGO. The petitioner submitted that any filtering and blocking on internet is counter productive and predatory.

The petitioner sought directions for the Ministry of Information Technology and the PTA to reopen the functioning of YouTube. He said taking away YouTube’s access is the modern equivalent of taking away the scholar’s pen. He prayed to the court to order for restoring access to YouTube in Pakistan.

The website was blocked by former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf about a year ago. Since then various segments of the society have demanded the restoration of access to the website.

The former prime minister had imposed the ban after YouTube refused to remove blasphemous film The Innocence of the Muslims from its website.

The Lahore High Court had asked the minister and secretary of Information Technology to appear before the court in August in a petition challenging the ban on access to video sharing website YouTube in Pakistan.

The number of people who accessed the Innocence of Muslims clip on YouTube is a tiny fraction of the number who used it to access educational and Islamic content, the Lahore High Court was told last month as it heard a petition challenging the ban on the video-sharing website. The petitioner in the case at the LHC had argued that the ban is counter-productive as it limits access to a vital educational and research tool.

The government was considering lifting the ban after Eidul Fitr but the ban has still not been lifted as all stakeholders need to be taken into confidence.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the larger bench as the Supreme Court. A correction has been made.