Pakistan removed from the Internet

By Popcorned1
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Popcorned1

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Pakistan removed from the Internet

The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan?s traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP?s must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content.

I cannot let the irony pass with out commenting. A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the Internet tides be stopped. A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube?s IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan?s Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world. As of this writing YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling. So, while working on a fix that will filter out the spurious route announcements, PCCW has found it necessary to shut down Pakistan?s Internet access. The leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country.

I could say: ?be careful what you wish for? to those elements that object to free and open access to information and expression of ideas. But to put it in terms they might understand better: Do not anger the Internet gods or you will suffer their wrath!

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https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/622058-pakistan-removed-from-the-internet/
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kingroach

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I have heard it has more to do with videos of voting corruption in Pakistan election that happened recently.. There is always something offensive in youtube, if the Pakistani government were really concerned over those then they would do something a long time ago..

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Noveed

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If they'd rather retreat to the dark ages than live with free speech, leave them to it. :hmmm:

lol pretty sure the internet is a recent phonomenon, and the dark ages are a long way a way from that. At most they would be going back to the 19th century.

Anyways i think it is kind of stupid blocking youtube, arguably the most popular site for video uploads. They should just create a database with youtube links of blasphemous content and filter that out. Its down to personal preference something that looks stupid and silly to one may be important to another.

This type of censoring has been done before. China filter and block content all the time, constantly monoitoring blogs etc and wikipedia. (not sure if they are still blocked of not). So if pakistan are doing it for thier own reasons i dont see why there is a problem, dont really here messages like "oh china is going back to the dark ages" when they have been actively doing this for longer.

I do not agree with the stance pakistan have over this, to me this is silly. But none the less people will find a way round the ban of youtube.

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