YouTube ban: CJ asked to set up full bench to decide plea

Petitioner argued that any filtering or blocking of the internet was counter-productive.

LAHORE:

A judge hearing a petition challenging the ban on YouTube on Thursday referred the matter to the chief justice of the Lahore High Court with the recommendation that a full bench be set up to decide the matter.

The video-sharing website was blocked all across Pakistan just over a year ago following protests over a blasphemous movie. An NGO named Bytes for All challenged the ban at the LHC, arguing that any filtering or blocking of the internet was counter-productive.

At the last hearing, the court had remarked that the government did not have the technological capability to completely block the blasphemous film and it was ultimately up to each individual to decide how to use the internet.

“In today’s digital age, information over the internet cannot be blocked. But it can be intelligently regulated. There are no borders or walls that can limit this information from flowing into Pakistan, unless of course we shut down the internet completely and sever our links with the outside world.

It appears that a sustainable answer to the problem is self-regulation at the individual and the house-hold levels. The World Wide Web has all sorts of information ranging from the very useful to the outright 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 in moral and cultural chaos,” the judge said.

“In the end, the responsibility and the choice to watch or not watch a controversial website is of the individual as the same cannot be effectively blocked according to the level of technology present in our country today.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2013.