Court to hear petition seeking re-opening of the video-sharing website today. CREATIVE COMMONS
There is no foolproof way to block access to a video that resulted in the ban on YouTube in Pakistan, according to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority Chairman Dr Ismail Shah. Dr Shah’s statement on Monday came a day before the Lahore High Court hears a petition seeking the court’s directive to the government to allow access to YouTube, blocked since September 2012.
The court will hear a petition filed by Bytes for All, a non-government organisation. The petitioner submitted that any filtering and blocking of information online is counter-productive and predatory. Dr Shah and officials from the ministry of information and technology will appear in court today to give a policy statement on whether the offending video – entitled The Innocence of Muslims – can be blocked.
“The PTA has tried to find a technical solution to block the video while keeping YouTube open, but it is next to impossible and this is what I will inform the court,” said Dr Shah, while addressing the first national 3G/4G seminar, held in Islamabad. The PTA can create a warning page that opens prior to the video, he suggested.
Shah said the video was uploaded on hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPs) – a communication protocol over a computer network which cannot be removed except by blocking the website. Shah will inform the court that the PTA cannot remove the video because of technical obstacles. At the end of the day, he said, the government and court will have to make a decision.
“We have looked into practices in other Muslim countries as well and found that they too could not block the video,” he said. He explained that the video is accessible in Qatar, preceded by a warning, a system that Pakistan could replicate. “Even if it is not available on YouTube, it will be available on other websites,” the chairman said. According to the PTA’s findings, there are 48,000 copies of the video accessible online currently. He explained that the Pakistani government had contacted Google Inc in order to remove the offending video, but was refused.
Dr Shah added that religious scholars had advised him that the government’s current strategy was wrong, prescribing that messages and videos spreading a positive message of Islam should be uploaded to counter negative portrayals.
3G Auction
While bidding for the auction of 3G and 4G licences will take part next month, Dr Shah said he was not confident of any new entrants taking part in the process. He said new entrants were requesting conditions such as a period of one year in which existing bidders should be barred from rolling out 3G services in the market, aimed at allowing new entrants time to gain a foothold in the market. “My assessment is that it will be difficult for a new player to enter the process,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 11th, 2014.
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This is ridiculous!!!
Only fool proof way to ban internet & education go ahead and do it
Mr. Shah I understand that PTA is under considerable duress on the issue but it is exactly statement like these that calls into question government motives,our media industry has educated and well informed resources,a counter narrative to extremism can be expanded to end this ridiculous ordeal once and for all. Besides if there is no credible way (and that is not true kindly refer to Saudia Arabia) to filter content there is also no fool proof way to uphold the ban.
@Annum: I second you. What is the logic behind banning youtube if that video is available in other sites too?
We could just 'flag' the video. Nahi? And, I'm surprised to see there still are so many people who care about Youtube block.
@Umair Ahmed: Hahaha. Are you serious or totally stupid?
@Umair Ahmed: Are you drunk or what!
Get your head out of gutter! Why, in what world, would a Muslim search for different ways to watch the blasphemous video that hurts his faith?
Why would anybody in Pakistan be interested in watching that blasphemous video. Whereas in rest of the non-muslim world, where somebody may be interested, its already open.
I just don't understand the logic behind this ban. May be in the land of pure, we don't need logic to do anything. Its just to keep those illiterate people happy.
What is the use of the ban when you can access it through other means? Yes, my dear government to make the ban effective, also ban VPN (paid+free), Orbit, DNS (google, open etc) and all proxy site. One of the simplest/easiest way to do it is to completely ban the internet with exclusions of servers i.e. Google, Hotmail, Pakistanis servers, Domain with PK, etc. LHC orders are still not being implemented, which is simply contempt of the court.
Maybe wasting such resources in trying to ban something on the internet, an inherently impossible cause, isn't the best idea?
As usual, government officials dont make any sense. If the video is not on youtube but on 40,000 other sites than whats the logic of banning youtube. The public has better things to do then search endlessly for a stupid, immature, blasphemous movie released almost 2 years ago.