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Pakistan YouTube incident adds to international outage

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

February 25, 2008, 2:27 PM

After a two hour stretch yesterday of refusing service to YouTube users across the globe, the Google-owned site said Pakistan is to blame.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered ISPs to re-route traffic away from a specific YouTube URL pointing to a trailer for Dutch Politician Geert Wilders' anti-Islamic video.

Wilders' video was widely anticipated to incite unrest among the Muslim community abroad, as the far right-wing politician is an outspoken anti-Islamist. Wilders told the BBC his film shows that the Koran is an inspiration for murder. Iran has already put pressure on the Netherlands to ban the film's release.

In YouTube's official statement regarding the two-hour outage, Pakistan was determined to be the source of "erroneous Internet Protocols" to which traffic was being routed. Though in the statement, YouTube does not detail exactly what happened, analysts say Pakistan's faulty route map somehow leaked and was adopted by PCCW, a major Asian telco. PCCW then broadcast the new route, and routers throughout much of the world changed their route maps accordingly, sending everyone in the wrong direction.

Preventative content blocking is not uncommon on the video site, as a result of other nations that have deemed videos harmful. China found some to be subversive, Iran found some immoral, Turkey found one in particular to have illegally insulted the name and image of its founding father Ataturk, Morocco determined some to be too critical of its treatment of Western Saharan peoples, Brazil found some to be embarrassing to public figures, and Thailand found one to be too critical of King Bhumbiol Adulyadej.

However, due to the inflammatory nature of Wilders' video and the offense to Muslims worldwide, some are questioning whether this was actually a simple mistake in blocking, or a premeditated move by Islamic extremists.

Pakistan has felt the effects of unfavorable media coverage since the Kargil Conflict in the late 1990s, a battle with the Indian military in Jammu and Kashmir. Due to the growing power of the Internet and media there at that time, some analysts believe the larger and more credible Indian media helped the country garner worldwide support, and defame Pakistan. Former prime minister -- and recent assassination victim -- Benazir Bhutto spoke in 1999, calling Kargil "Pakistan's Biggest Blunder."

Shortly after this, Pervez Musharraf took over as the country's leader. Early in his tenure, Musharraf spoke out against extremism and terrorism, pledged to battle islamic extremism within Pakistan, and took measures to change the country's unstable political hierarchy.

Of these, the elections in 2007 were viewed as a move by the country toward Democracy. "Islam and democracy are fully incompatible," Geert Wilders told The Washington Post in 2005. "They will never be compatible -- not today, and not in a million years."

A month after Musharraf's election, he declared a state of emergency due to Islamist militants and interference from the judiciary. He ordered the arrest of political dissidents, activists, lawyers and supreme court justices, and shut down all private television stations.

After resigning from his military position to act as a civilian leader, Musharraf's PML-Q party lost control of Parliament, one senior opposition leader called for the president to step down.

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By AZ08

edited Feb 26, 2008 - 2:50 PM

...analysts say Pakistan's faulty route map somehow leaked and was adopted by PCCW, a major Asian telco. ..."
Why does a major Asian telco get its route map from Pakistan ?! Scratch, scratch.

Score: 0

By n0m@n

edited Feb 26, 2008 - 12:09 AM

Go take a hike Tim.
When politics is not your area dont &^%*ing try your hands on it. What they &*$k you think since you are from west you know every damn detail about the demographics of the world and specially the asia. You do not even know about your own roots sweety...... Musharraf has never been prime minister... correct check history u f*&^ing ba$^^ed.

What do you have to say on the comsat's T&C that my friend has post here.... i know you do not have the guts to come here and respond to any of this...............FU

Score: 0

By fedora_fawad

posted Feb 27, 2008 - 11:23 PM

Hey!!
Who has written this above story ..... Musharraf is not a "priminister" but he is a president and also the elections were not held in 2007 but they are held recently in februry 2008... so much mistakes!!!!!

Score: 0

By yourcat

posted Feb 25, 2008 - 8:59 PM

What, again?

Score: 0

By Crispy777

posted Feb 25, 2008 - 7:25 PM

Lol @ funny American using word "foreign". You can try to go on american TV and try to say "We have freedom of ****ing speech". You will get censored.

Score: 0

By Crispy777

edited Feb 25, 2008 - 7:26 PM

Oh, I just got ****ing censored! lol! Freedom of speech! Damn you christian hippocrites!

Score: 0

By XMLaroux

posted Feb 25, 2008 - 3:34 PM

What? No HDDVD vs BlueRay talk? No one here knows anything about the world, or has no response?

This is common place with foreign countries to jack with the internet... they don't have free speech/expression everywhere... so, they get what they get!

I wonder what there "Terms and Conditions" document states on their internet connections...

Score: 0

By Second Shadow

posted Feb 25, 2008 - 11:01 PM

Wonder no more! I actually found it!

This is what the Pakistani Internet Service Provider "Terms and Conditions" document states:
(The Internet Provider) "reserves the right to refuse to transmit or post, and to remove or block, any information or materials, in whole or in part, that it, in its sole discretion, deems to be in violation of the "Content and information restrictions" section above in this Policy, harmful to its network or customers using the Service, negatively affecting its network or customers using the Service, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful."

Clear enough, right?

...

Oh! Wait! No, I messed up. That was actually COMCAST'S "Terms and Conditions" document, not the Pakistani one. But I'll keep looking for it. Meanwhile, you can take a look at the rest of the Comcast document here:
http://www6.comcast.net/terms/use/

Enjoy! :)

Score: 0

By flibberyGiveIt

posted Feb 26, 2008 - 2:27 PM

I was thinking: "Hey, that sounds just like ATT's."

Score: 0

By mubbashir

posted Feb 28, 2008 - 8:43 AM

This is great!!
Its always good to start from comments
Guys who have post there comments are far more interesting then the one who have posted.
Great work all you.

Score: 0