Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is scheduled to visit New York on 23rd of this month to attend the UN General Assembly session and is due to fly to USA today (Sunday). During his weeklong stay in the US‚ the Prime Minister will address the UN General Assembly on 27th September in which he is set to highlight Pakistan’s point of view on various regional and international issues, besides domestic priorities.

Sources in telecom sector privy to the development told this scribe that YouTube is likely to reopen soon across the country as the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication has dispatched a summary to the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. They said that ostensibly necessary measures and arrangements to point out and immediately block the unbearable material from the Internet has been completed. And, with this, the sacrilegious material would be blocked or filtered with the assistance of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). A committee constituted by the ministry has already given his green signal to go ahead and recommended to reload the website, they added.

Since the incumbent PML-N government has sworn in power, it has been seriously contemplating over the controversial matter very sensitively to reopen the YouTube. A research had also been initiated by the telecom ministry to determine the YouTube links, which contained the sacrilegious movie, and also for blocking mechanisms for other URLs and links on both the Http and the secure Https protocols to ensure the restraint of controversial content.

During the last week of August last, Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication Anusha Rahman Khan while taking to the media persons also said that YouTube would open soon and a cell has been established in PTA to point out and immediately block the unbearable material from the Internet. She also said that a team comprising experts was working hard round the clock to block the sites containing blasphemous material and about 4000 such sites have already been blocked. She said that the government was working on the issue involving blockage of YouTube and a committee consisting of 14 members had deeply worked on the matter and had put forwarded some recommendations for consideration to resolve the matter permanently. The committee recommended the government to open the website, she added.

The minister also said that with the help of free of cost filters from Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) a trial was conducted and 4,000 URLs had been blocked successfully. She also informed the journalists that a response cell in PTA has also been established to monitor and immediately block the blasphemous material on the Internet following the refusal of the Google Inc. management to block those URL that contained unbearable material, she added.

The Google Inc had so far declined to cooperate with the government of Pakistan in removing unpleasant material from the websites and the honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan that found blasphemous material on the website ordered to suspend the YouTube in Pakistan. Moreover, the last government to quell simmering protests appeared after the release of anti-Islam amateur film “Innocence of Muslims”, had blocked YouTube in Pakistan in 2012. And, a decision to close YouTube in Pakistan was also taken by the Inter-Ministerial Committee. In accordance, the IT ministry ordered PTA to block the websites. Similarly, a policy directive was also issued by the ministry in May 2012 and advised the PTA to deploy a state of the art technical solution to proactively and independently block blasphemous and pornographic matters from the websites.

Interestingly, the IT ministry had earlier also taken up the matters with the management of YouTube and Facebook for blocking the blasphemous content from websites. In response, Facebook had restricted the access and upload of the video on the website. But, the Google Inc did not remove the sacrilegious content by saying that YouTube complies with international laws that are subject to the laws of United States that, however, do not comply with Pakistan-specific content removal request.

The Nation

For an entire year now we have had to make do without one of modern civilisation’s most comforting creations – YouTube – just because some loser who is now languishing in jail put up a trailer for a movie that was never even made. We ended up punishing the estimated seven million Pakistanis who use YouTube just to ‘protect’ them from something they either would never have heard about or shown no interest in perusing. And we have continued doing so for 365 days! At this point our nose is so disfigured only rhinoplasty will restore it.

Nothing is more annoying than the smug self-satisfactory ignorance of those who support the ban. There are many, who obviously understand nothing of how YouTube, or indeed the internet, works who have gleefully explained how the ban in Pakistan is costing Google so much lost revenue. Such inconvenient facts, like YouTube not making any money from the country because it doesn’t have a country-specific site here or that it loses nearly half a billion dollars a year, do not matter to a mind that closes itself off to reason.

A recent online poll conducted about YouTube in Pakistan found that over 60 percent of people claim to use the video-sharing site for educational purposes. In an equally unscientific assertion, I would venture that more than 50 percent of those people were lying, unless education is defined as learning about the art of reverse swing from old clips of Wasim and Waqar. Those who want YouTube unblocked are already ceding a lot of ground when they try to defend the site as a tool for learning rather than what it really is: lots and lots of fun.

The one thing this country could use is people who stand up for having a good time. There are a lot of things that can’t be defended on the grounds of utility but still provide much joy to the world. Failing to acknowledge the pleasure principle is what has led to all those fun things still being illegal which were outlawed more than three decades ago in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s last-gasp attempt to save his rule.

Since ZAB’s time there has unfortunately been a surge in the kind of people who HL Mencken described as harbouring the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” Fighting back against that mindset on all fronts is mandatory if we don’t want censorship and a loss of liberty to continue for another three decades.

The YouTube ban, powerful though it is as a symbol of censorship since it most affects the wealthy who are only used to the freedoms of others being taken away, is only one example of the killjoys encroaching on our right to seek what the US Declaration of Independence called the “pursuit of happiness.”

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the MMA government became notorious for defacing and tearing down billboards and giving a good go at destroying Pakhtun cinema. Self-righteous thugs and charlatans have attacked theatres, enacted the harassment of innocent teen couples for the enjoyment of the moral police watching along on their TV screens and cast judgement on anyone who does not live their life the exact way they want them to. And all of us have been too scared to speak out for fear of being cast as irreligious or, horror of horrors, secular.

Pakistan has become a country where we are no longer to pursue what makes us happy, even if isn’t hurting anyone else. The professional scolds in society are no longer content to mind their own business despite being under no compunction to alter their lifestyle from the evil secularists. This is why those who denounce extremists on both sides are being so disingenuous. There is only one side that is giving the other marching orders and shoving their virtues down our throats. The other side would just like to be left alone and for everyone to be free to choose which lifestyle they prefer.

The debate – to the small extent that it exists – has been framed as one between virtue and sin rather than freedom and censorship. This is why nothing remotely positive will be written about anything that has been denounced by a small but extremely vocal minority. Everyone is simply too cowered by them, and the threat of violence implicit in their moral denunciations, to mount a challenge. The ban on YouTube was meant to stave off any potential violence that may have been caused by the offending trailer. Yet, we still had violence just a few days after the site was blocked. Now a year later the ban has become the norm and, in an inversion of the way things should be, we have to argue that the ban is illogical rather than forcing proponents of the ban to explain why it still continues.

Freedom in this country is nothing but a poetic truth trotted out around election time so that we can be proud of being a democracy. For true freedom to prevail – the kind where preening moralists and fearful governments cannot simply snatch away anything they don’t want us to enjoy – the ballot box is only the first rest stop in a long journey.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. Email: nadir.hassan@gmail.com

The News

The bill might take one or two more months to be presented in Parliament and then passed and implemented. But that is a basic requirement to convince any international website to launch a localised version in the country.

The ministry only reached this point after it realised filtration of sacrilegious content is a very expensive and difficult process.

Although during the previous days the ministry claimed having found some way to block blasphemous content on YouTube, it may be able to open the website when it would be fully confident about the achievement.

But it does not seem possible at this point in time, so the ministry is considering certain other options. Without assuring that blasphemous content could not be seen on the social-networking, re-opening it would not be possible for the government, as it might incite protests and riots across the country.

On the other hand, for a localised version of YouTube, it is a pre-requisite that legislation is done to provide shelter to the website from bad or unwanted posts.

As per the proposed law, the website cannot be sued in case something immoral and illegal is shared on it. But in response the website will be bound to remove that material or content from its localised domain. However this bar will not be applicable to its international website.

As per an official of the ministry, the developers of YouTube were contacted and asked to remove sacrilegious material. It has been two months. They are taking the plea that content blocking would be against its policy. They float the idea about a localised version of YouTube though.

At present many countries have their local versions of YouTube. These include India, Turkey, Malaysia, Algeria, Jordon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen. YouTube has also proposed localised versions for Saudi Arabia and some other countries.

For Saudi Arabia blasphemous content has been blocked without blocking the website. Pakistan does not have enough resources to get a similar thing done.

For India blasphemous content was blocked by YouTube on local version. China does not have a localised version but a very powerful filter to block unwanted content.

The Nation

On September 17, 2012 Islamabad blocked access to the popular video-sharing website after it aired a trailer for a low-budget American film deemed offensive to Islam.

Pakistan summoned the most senior US diplomat in the country to protest against the “Innocence of Muslims”, demanding that the film be removed and action taken against its producers.

A year later, the film is barely mentioned but YouTube, whose parent company is US multinational Google Inc, is still banned in Pakistan, as it is in China and Iran.

Pakistan is no stranger to censorship. Foreign television programmes deemed offensive are blocked. Films shown at cinemas are stripped of scenes considered too daring.

But the YouTube ban is in name only.

Internet users like Abdullah Raheem, a university student in Pakistan’s cultural capital Lahore, can easily access the site through a simple proxy or Virtual Private Network (VPN).

“Most people who go to school or university know how to access YouTube, but not the rest of the population,” says Abdullah. Only 10 percent of Pakistan’s estimated 180 million people have access to the Internet, one of the lowest rates in the world.

“This ban has no impact,” says Abdullah, who still feels bad about logging onto YouTube. “As a Muslim, I’m ashamed… because the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ defiled Islam.”

Pakistan blocked the site only after Google was unable to block access to the film because it has no antenna in the country.

Although Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt defended hosting the film, the company did have the technology to block access to it in countries such as Egypt, India and Saudi Arabia.

But the Pakistani government didn’t stop there. It then ordered that websites be monitored for “anti-Islam content”.

The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which specialises in Internet censorship, says Pakistan has used Canadian company Netsweeper to filter websites relating to human rights, sensitive religious topics and independent media.

The researchers say that pornographic content and political websites from Balochistan, the southwestern province gripped by separatist insurgency, are among those blocked.

Shortly after Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf was arrested in April, Pakistan shut down access to a satirical song posted on YouTube’s rival Video that poked fun at the army.

But the song “Dhinak Dhinak” performed by the Beygairat Brigade, which is Urdu for Shameless Brigade, quickly went viral as Pakistani Internet users went through proxy VPNs to watch it.

“It is still creating waves. So I think they helped our popularity by banning that song,” said the Brigade’s lead singer Ali Aftab Saeed, 29.

Saeed believes that the authorities are bent on a wider campaign of Internet censorship, not just restricting access to items considered blasphemous in the nation.

“We thought that they would try to ban just the link to that particular video (‘Innocence of Muslims’) but they instead banned the whole website (YouTube) and then they extended it to satire and people who discuss the role of military groups. So yes, it is a worrying situation,” he told AFP.

Shahzad Ahmad, director of Internet rights campaign group, Bytes For All, also says that online censorship serves a wider political agenda than just shutting down blasphemous content.

“The government is trying to curtail, limit and curb citizen freedom of expression,” Ahmad told AFP.

He says citizens are waging a “cyberwar” against Pakistani institutions who are blocking and filtering the Internet.

“There is a very clear defiance from users, particularly from the youth on government filtering,” he told AFP.

Bytes For All has gone to court in Lahore, demanding an end to “illegal and illegitimate” censorship of the Internet.

The fight is vital to stop the government developing tools of censorship that threaten “the security and private live” of individuals, says Farieha Aziz, a member of the Bolo Bhi advocacy group that is closely following the case, which encompasses the YouTube ban. Software surveillance FinFisher, developed by British company Gamma and able to access content on personal computers, has been detected recently on Pakistani servers.

Although it is unclear whether it has been deployed by Pakistan’s own intelligence agencies or foreigners, the NSA scandal in the United States has heightened suspicions. In Pakistan, the cyberwar has only just begun.

Daily Times

It is tragic that while we see all hate preachers doing brisk business over the internet, sites of science and humanism have been axed

Together with countries like China, Iran and Turkmenistan, Pakistan happens to be a place where people cannot access YouTube because of an official ban by the government. The aforementioned countries are well known for human rights abuses. Why Pakistan is in that league is harder to understand.

When Jawed Karim posted Me at the zoo, a 20-second video, commenting upon trunks of elephants at the San Diego Zoo in 2005 on his newly created video-sharing site, few could have guessed that one day this novel idea of users-created video would attract more than one billion users watching over six billion hours of video each month. In terms of variety of content, YouTube serves as the world’s greatest superstore as it caters to the needs of almost all internet users. No wonder it was declared the best invention of the first decade of the 21st century by many analysts including Entertainment Weekly.

Of many sad legacies of the previous government the unjustifiable ban on YouTube a year ago must appear very high on the list along with bad governance and corruption. The government reacted as if Pakistan was the only Muslim country on this planet, as we did not see any other Muslim country so obsessed with causing self-inflicted wounds over religious issues for such a long duration. Condemning a tasteless and sloppy movie was a perfectly sane and appreciable act, both at individual and national level. But the unruly faithful began damaging national property and killing their own countrymen in order to prove how inflammable they were. If government acted irresponsibly, the judiciary also left much to be desired by failing to protect the freedoms of an ordinary internet user.

Banning a popular tool or website is the same as banning pen and paper. We need to understand the notion of literacy first in order to appreciate the issue. An illiterate person is one who is unable to communicate his knowledge through non-verbal means for storage purposes. In the era of printing, anyone who cannot read a book or write with a pen is considered illiterate. In ancient civilisations clay tablets were used, so those who were unable to communicate with their help were the illiterate of those times. In this internet-enabled communications era, the definition of literacy has also undergone transformation and anyone who is unable to communicate through electronic communication cannot be called a literate person. Google, YouTube, internet browsers and various social media have become standard media of literacy in the 21st century. Government and judiciary have done a great disservice to the young by depriving them of one of the most important literacy devices for more than a year.

On July 1, 1977, the weekly holiday was changed to Friday from Sunday by the then PPP government. It was left to the Nawaz Sharif government to take the pragmatic and bold decision of reverting to Sunday. Once again all eyes are on the pragmatic government to clear the mess created by its predecessor in its failed attempt to play Machiavelli with the rabble. The first public statement about banning Google by the lady cabinet member entrusted with information technology however poured cold water over my enthusiasm. Of late there are reports that suggest that YouTube might soon be restored to its millions of users and some sanity might return among our decision makers.

It is not just lifting the ban on YouTube that concerns me though. More worrying is the dictatorial and fascist way in which a few trigger-happy PTA officials decide what is appropriate for internet users. Even more worrying is the tendency of certain members of the judiciary to prove their faith credentials by wearing the mantle of the ‘defender of the faith’. Theological differences have long been debated by Muslim thinkers. We should stop dispensing certificates of true faith as we have a rich legacy of a rationalist past. Ibne Sina, Al Razi, Ibne Rushd and Sir Syed, to name a few, had challenged many dominant doctrines of their times. Faith should be facilitated to evolve, otherwise stagnation sets in. The internet facilitates this process in a non-intrusive manner. Unlike TV and newspapers, the material is not forced on the user. On the internet, we access any material of our own sweet choice as no one can force anything on us. As such, PTA and the courts should keep their interference in electronic material to the minimum. Only porn websites and material that glamourises and promotes violence, hatred and terrorism should be banned. But it is tragic that while we see all hate preachers doing brisk business over the internet, sites of science and humanism have been axed. For example, the famous site of the Oxford University’s science populist professor Richard Dawkins has been blocked for promoting scientific thinking and debunking irrational myths. Similarly a popular Facebook site ‘Roshni’ has been banned for Pakistani users as the site sensitises internet users over human rights abuses.

One hopes, along with lifting the ban on YouTube, the government would focus its energies on websites run by extremists, hatemongers and militants and not impose bans on websites that encourage progressive thinking and respect for human values. It is hoped sanity will now prevail and those in power will find better ways of playing to the gallery.

The writer teaches public policy in the UK and is the founding member of the Rationalist Society of Pakistan. He can be reached at hashah9@yahoo.com

Daily Times

I had been considering writing on this topic for a while, but I foolishly believed it to be ‘trivial’ or ‘unimportant’, or even ‘so incredibly stupid that my brain hurt to dwell on it for more than a moment’. But our elected leadership and our guardians of justice have managed to open my stubborn eyes. If they apparently believe it to be the most important stand they will ever take, how can I ignore it?

I commend the powers that be, from all branches of the government. Our detractors may insist that our government has all the efficacy of a wet paper bag at a pillow fight but we have proved them wrong. We have proved that when it matters, when we come down to it, when our future is on the line we do not infight, we do not waver. We are coming up to a year since we have patriotically held firm and held together in that most important of issues: YouTube.

This was a necessary step, of course, in showing western powers that we will not be bullied from without, that we will fight tooth and nail for our people. Yes, we kidnapped and detained people within our borders without due process at the behest of other governments. Yes, we allow drones to bombard civilian areas. Yes, we are constantly being dictated terms due to our coffers being so perennially depleted that we envy countries with a cash flow problem (because it implies that they, in fact, have a cash flow).

But one video among millions (available on many other websites) that can only offend someone if they search for it, view it and keep watching till the end? Now they have pushed us too far.

Showing our defiance, showing we are not ones to shy away from an international tussle, our newly appointed Minister for Information Anusha Rehman said we would unblock YouTube once every website, as in the entire internet, was free from objectionable content and presumably once the Sahara Desert was free from grains of sand. Neither criticism, nor mockery, nor our own staggering ignorance about the way the internet works has stopped our relentless defence.

Such is commitment, in the face of critics like Mina Muhibullah Kakakhel, who insist that students are suffering from missing the literally millions of educational and research oriented videos available on YouTube. If she truly cared about students, she would have realised long ago that no education is worth the risk that some evildoer will come into our schools, hold the children hostage, and force them to search for, open and watch the offending video.

We are a proud nation. We may negotiate with and harbour terrorists, we may have reduced our largest city to a nightmarish perpetual gangland through inaction, we may react to our annual floods with the foresight and reflexes of a man in a coma but by all that is holier than thou, we will not give in on this.

The Ostrich Defence is a time-honoured technique that we have perfected over time. Our ban of YouTube has not removed the videos because if we had the power to impose censorship worldwide I shudder (with delight of course!) to imagine what we’d do. But, like the magnificent ostrich (the most elegant and intelligent of all birds) we drive our heads into the sand with the comfortable knowledge that if we can’t see it, it can’t exist.

We occasionally couple this with our elegant Entitled Auntie Haggling Over Fish defence. Now, we claim with a straight face that would make the most consummate poker player blush, YouTube will suffer the loss of our custom. No more shall the completely free service profit from pious Pakistanis who never buy anything in their targeted ads. Like a shopkeeper who forgets his place, Google (YouTube’s parent company and almost certainly the 2030 owners of the world) will come back to the offended Auntie and grovel until she magnanimously restores them to her good graces.

And they certainly must. Without Pakistan, people will soon ask “Google who?” but will of course be unable to find the answer because no one remembers how to find things out without Google.

There is also a perfectly plausible security-based reason for this ban that can be understood via sufficient wringing of the brain (if it doesn’t hurt, you’re not wringing hard enough). By appeasing those who would have turned violent had YouTube not been banned – by definition, criminals and terrorists – we are embarking on a bold new strategy of pre-emptively surrendering, like a lifelong urban veteran wearily taking out his wallet at every traffic light whether anyone has asked him for it or not.

A more naïve leadership may have considered defending liberties and freedom to information, while punishing violent criminals. But so sagacious have we become that we have skipped over the formalities of attempting to control the situation, pretending the writ of the state can overrule rabble rousers, fighting, losing and negotiating. Indeed, we have skipped all that unnecessary hassle and moved straight to wringing our hands and asking whether aforementioned violent criminals would like some tea while they think of the next ridiculous demand, and the one after that, forever.

A point that has been brought up by weak-willed and unpatriotic Pakistanis is that we should be more thick-skinned, and ignore pathetic attempts at crude mockery by small and hateful people. The very idea! If our eyes offend us, we will cast them out. YouTube is a good start – but only a start.

We will ban every other video service that hosts a video uploaded by anyone, anywhere, that offends any Pakistani. We will ban search engines that return blasphemous insults if you search ‘blasphemous insults’. We will ban pens if a pen anywhere has been used to write offensive things because what other choice do we have? To not seek out, acquire and consume these rage-inducing pieces of media that literally anyone anywhere can create at any time? Ridiculous.

We must show we are ready to go back to the Stone Age, and even that only if those cave paintings are pre-approved. If not, back to living in trees, all the better to have a moral high ground while we become a frightening but fascinating spectacle for National Geographic.

We must show we are prepared to riot and murder a score of our own people (that’ll show those filthy westerners) every time an acne-riddled teenager anywhere decides he wants attention. Surely, allowing under-20 trolls the world over a chance to shut down our entire society every time they feel like it cannot possibly backfire.

So next time you feel depressed at the sheer scope of our unaddressed problems, next time you wonder what our government and judiciary – elected and supported by the mandate of the people in a heady rush of democracy – plan to do about extremism, power shortages, natural disasters and education, take heart: at least we’ve banned YouTube.

Zaair Hussain…The writer is a freelance contributor. Email: zaairhussain@gmail.com

The News

KARACHI: The government’s ban on video-sharing website YouTube has been protested on Twitter and Facebook time and again by everyone from ordinary citizens to journalists and musicians in the past four months.

While most have tried to live a life without YouTube — either by using Vimeo and Dailymotion — or around it by using proxies, the Pakistani music industry has suffered largely in silence. One group of artists has realised the importance of such a video-sharing platform, and has come up with a unique way to protest the ban — YouTube Aloud, a collaborative effort between Omran Shafique (Momo) from Mauj, Hamza Jaafri from CoVEN and Pakistan’s child prodigy Usman Riaz.

“YouTube Aloud is a social media page where we [and the Facebook community] express our thoughts about how this ban is having a negative effect on society,” Riaz tells The Express Tribune.

“Everything that I have learnt and achieved is a direct result of having a close connection to the online realm,” says Riaz. “YouTube can be the reason I became a TED Fellow. I would have never had a chance to speak on the TED stage or perform with Preston Reed — the man whose videos I used to watch on YouTube when I first picked up the guitar — if I didn’t have access to YouTube.”

As a representative of the group, Riaz raises the question: “Does it make sense to burn down an entire library just because you don’t agree with the contents of one of its books?”

In December, Riaz had posted a message on his Facebook page, asking other artists such as Adil Omar, Natasha Humera Ejaz and Mole if they would be interested in holding a marathon concert in support of YouTube. He wrote: “It will do two things. (1) It can be the press conference that Hamza Jaafri had in mind to discuss the negative aspects of this ban on the artistic community (which I am sure we all whole-heartedly agree with) and (2) it can result in a lot of artists coming together to perform and show content.”

“Hear! Hear! We are all with you on this one!” posted Meesha Shafi, in response to Riaz’s post. Others reacted in the same spirit, but so far, the concert has not taken place.

Musicians Zohaib Kazi and Zoe Viccaji recently wrote an open letter requesting Interior Minister Rehman Malik to restore the site. A line from the letter reads: “YouTube is a medium that provides a platform for both. It is a library of today and an archive for tomorrow — an archive from which we will be missing”.

Even Junaid Jamshed, the former Vital Signs member turned entrepreneur, feels YouTube should be restored. According to Jamshed, YouTube is a source of research and information. “I think we have already made our point by banning it — now it should be restored immediately,” he says.

“It is a free medium of information for people and plays a pivotal role in religious education because a large number of people go on YouTube to read the Quran and other religious texts,” explains Jamshed. “We are a Muslim nation and will not tolerate or watch anything blasphemous, even if it is present on YouTube. As a Muslim Ummah, we know what is right or wrong for us.”

However, not everyone agrees that the YouTube ban is impacting our music industry in a negative way. Senior musician Asad Ahmed, who has been in the music scene for three decades, says, “[YouTube] should be restored but I don’t think it is harming the music industry.”

“It’s funny that [people are] saying that,” he chuckles. “Around 50% of Coke Studio’s viewership is outside Pakistan and the real YouTube fans in Pakistan already have Spotflux or hotspot shield working for them.”

Pakistan Press Foundation

KARACHI: In all likelihood, YouTube will remain inaccessible in Pakistan for the foreseeable future. Islamabad’s negotiations with Google – the internet giant that owns YouTube – may prove fruitless unless Pakistan ensures legal support to the regulation of digital content, The Express Tribune has learned.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has been in talks with Google for more than three months now, but has so far failed to convince the internet titan to remove the offensive ‘Innocence of Muslims’ video from its popular video-sharing website.

As per the company’s policy, Google will not block the said video in Pakistan because it does not have a localised version of the website – the only factor that could have pushed Google to entertain the government’s request.

With the government unable to achieve a breakthrough, internet service providers (ISPs) – key stakeholders affected by the ban on YouTube – have started lobbying to push Google to register the website in Pakistan so that they can autonomously block all links reported as offensive to Pakistani sentimentalities, say industry sources.

ISPs’ representatives pushed this agenda in a recent meeting of stakeholders in the issue, which was also attended by Google’s representative in Pakistan and government officials. However, such efforts may be in vain, as Google holds several reservations regarding the country’s regulatory environment, sources said.

In the absence of intermediary liability protection – a form of legal protection for platforms like YouTube from unlawful exploitation by third parties (such as users) – sources say that Google may not localise YouTube after all.

Similar laws exist in India and even Bangladesh, sources point out. However, the regulatory environment in Pakistan is uncertain. The government has not been able to table the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill; the national IT policy has expired; and the government is also considering a controversial automated filtering system that can serve as a blanket ban on the internet. These reasons are enough for Google to excuse itself from localising YouTube, to the disadvantage of local users.

The website’s popularity can be judged from the fact that YouTube made headlines in local news last week, after Interior Minister Rehman Malik tweeted that the website would be unblocked in 24 hours. Malik’s tweet indicated that the government was acquiring some kind of firewall or filtering system that would restrict the offensive video without blocking the entire website.

A day after Malik’s tweet, the PTA directed ISPs to unblock the website. However, it abruptly reversed its directives within the next couple of hours; purportedly because the video was still available and could be accessed on the website.

“It was an ill-thought-out policy directive from the IT ministry, which was enforced by the PTA without a proper look into the technicalities of the matter,” an official privy to developments told The Express Tribune.

“The links can be blocked one by one. PTA had [initially] blocked more than 750 links leading to the said video: but that required an extensive effort stretching over 48 hours,” the official said. “After three months, the number of links to the same video has reached closed to a million. This will require a greater effort. This cannot be done overnight.”

The other possibility is that the governments use an automated filtration system to block out censored content. The IT ministry has directed the PTA to implement a high-tech system to filter blasphemous content without blocking entire websites. However, this requires a huge investment, and the directive fails to mention who will fund the project, the official said.

Pakistan Press Foundation

A number of freely available proxy websites and software applications on internet have largely made the government’s ban on YouTube ineffective. Whether the government lifts the restriction or continues it further, the users will however feel no difference because of the available unblocking methods, telecom professionals said.

The globally popular video sharing website is being conveniently visited for movies, songs, cartoon films, sports matches, education learning and for other materials despite the government’s ban. “There are a number of ways to unblock any restricted site on internet with the help of a variety of websites and applications which are easily available for users,” telecom sources said on Tuesday.

Pakistan banned access to YouTube in mid-September last year as the top video site had posted an anti-Islam movie which triggered mass demonstration and violent protests in Muslim world. The ban on YouTube since then continues though a brief resumption late December in 2012 was witnessed. “The government may reopen the site for local users anytime but its ban however is largely diluted by the proxy servers,” the telecom professionals said.

Whether it is learning of English language, solving mathematics questions and physics numerical, photography, poems for children, computer education or any other academic and professional knowledge, YouTube is believed the world’s best site, they said. The tube also provides access through free account to every user to upload personal footages, pictures and videos on the site, which can be seen across the world. “It is also a best and most effective site for children education,” they said.

However, video site has emerged a source of disrepute to religions, social and culture norms and propaganda tool across the world, they said. “The site has its paradoxical status, you may like and at the same hate it for the stuff posted on it,” they pointed out.

The official stance on banning YouTube is still vague, as Pakistan Telecommunication Authority can block the unwanted material and make the site accessible for all internet users, they suggested. “The use of free proxies widely enables the users to click on YouTube without any problems or inconvenience,” they said, adding that “the government just needs to weed out the unwanted material, instead of unblocking the site,” they opined. They said the growing computer literacy rate in Pakistan shows that such restriction will make no impact on internet users. “Every user is equipped with ample knowledge of computer and its internet applications,” they added.

Pakistan Press Foundation

Reportedly, a national URL filtering system is going to be deployed in Pakistan whose objective will be to block blasphemous and pornographic web contents at the basic, URL level. After this deployment, PTA and the ISPs will be able to block the URLs linked to that video, paving the way for YouTube to be opened in Pakistan. It is not known as to how much time that will take.

That process must be expedited because the large video sharing platform of YouTube has its benefits for the people. Junaid Khan, the left-arm medium-fast bowler who wowed everyone with his swing bowling against the Indian top order last Sunday, is said to have learnt these swing bowling skills watching YouTube videos of Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younus. The 23-year-old Khan hails from Matra, Swabi (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

Until few months ago, before the YouTube ban went into effect, kids training in cricket academies would tell similar stories. Teenagers on the tennis courts could be seen talking about how they learnt a particular forehand or backhand shot in a YouTube video that they wanted to practice with their coach. Musician friends could be overheard discussing new chords and notes they improvised watching YouTube videos.

The point is that YouTube had gradually become a medium in Pakistan through which passion and talent started developing into skills. There must be several more examples like Khan’s, in various fields. It almost goes unnoticed, but YouTube has a complementary effect on education at various levels.

YouTube is an immense learning resource for students and teachers as well as parents and coaches, who all can benefit from lectures and talks by eminent scholars, professors and practitioners. Video libraries of online self-learning sites like the ‘Khan Academy’ and ‘Coursera’ are readily available on YouTube, helping those looking to learn or master concepts and skills.

Learning work skills is another area. The first CEO of Pakistan’s Universal Service Fund (USF) highlighted USF’s experience in this regard while speaking to BR Research over a year ago. He referred to the pilot for the USF’s ‘Universal Telecenters’ project in rural areas which showed that females enrolled in these Telecenters, for computer literacy, demonstrated great interest in learning new stitching designs and sewing techniques from YouTube videos.

Similarly, YouTube’s platform has been found to immensely benefit computer programmers, software engineers, researchers, and those engaged in other kinds of knowledge work. For all these positive reasons, and many more which could not be narrated here, the ban on YouTube should be lifted in Pakistan, after addressing the underlying issue, at the earliest.

Pakistan Press Foundation