Video-sharing website has been blocked since Sep 2012 over its failure to take down 'Innocence of Muslims' movie. DESIGN: ANUSHAY FURQAN
The video-sharing website has been blocked in Pakistan since September 2012 over its failure to take down the Innocence of Muslims movie that sparked furious protests around the world.
A US appeals court on February 26 ordered Google, which owns YouTube, to remove the film after a lawsuit brought by an actress who says she was tricked into appearing in it.
Technology think-tank Bytes for All said that with the removal of the crude movie, regarded as highly blasphemous by many Muslims, the government had no reason to maintain the ban.
"We think that now the government of Pakistan has been left with no excuse to continue blocking access to YouTube," Shahzad Ahmed from Bytes for All told AFP.
"But the ban on YouTube has got more to do with the government's desires and efforts to impose censorship, content filtering and moral policing and we are fighting against them in court through a constitutional petition."
There was no immediate response from the government.
Due to its sacrilegious content, Innocence of Muslims triggered protests across Pakistan that left more than 20 people dead.
Free-speech activists in the country have complained of creeping censorship in the name of protecting religion or preventing obscenity.
In November 2011 the telecommunications authority tried to ban nearly 1,700 "obscene" words from text messages, which included innocuous terms such as "lotion", "athlete's foot" and "idiot".
In 2010 Pakistan shut down Facebook for nearly two weeks over alleged blasphemy. It continues to restrict hundreds of online links.
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Nothing displays the bankruptness of logic, reason and moral courage than the continued ban of youtube. We are the laughing stock of the world who clearly sees our impotence of being able to do anything of significance to counter the religious provocation. The social and educational benefits of you tube far surpass any sensibilities being disturbed. I think we should not just have banned youtube, instead we should have taken the source of the cancer - we should have banned thye Internet. We are pathetic, are we not!
Its not about us, they don't even care, if they are removing video for their own benefits. and What about the new video which was recently released of katy perry's new song "Dark Horse"? Showing Allah name I
I do not think YouTube is banned in Pakistan due to the objectionable contents related to Islam
Democracy is nothing more than a pipe dream in Pakistan. Dream on people.
“Google will challenge the ruling. A spokesperson said by email: “Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an actress in the Innocence of Muslims trailer may have a copyright claim over her five-second appearance in the video. As a result the court ordered Google to remove the video from our services. We strongly disagree with this ruling and will fight it.”
blocking anything on the internet nowadays is as close to fascism any govt can get. blasphemy doesn't even factor into the right of freedom of information.
FYI, Google is never looser, Google spokesman: “Google will challenge the ruling. A spokesperson said by email: “Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an actress in the Innocence of Muslims trailer may have a copyright claim over her five-second appearance in the video. As a result the court ordered Google to remove the video from our services. We strongly disagree with this ruling and will fight it.”