This past Sunday, the popular website YouTube experienced a blackout. The higher forces in Pakistan redirected all access to the website when it was dicovered that a video clip attacking Islam was posted. Government officials in Pakistan became worried that the clip might create unrest among its Muslim population.
Two major mistakes were made however during the process of denying access to the website which caused a blackout worldwide. The first being Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, the country's Internet provider, created a dummy route to the YouTube website. This resulted in viewers being sent to a black hole instead. The next error happened when Pakistan Telecom announced the dummy route to PCCW, a telecommunications partner based in Hong Kong. From there, PCCW accepted the dummy route for YouTube and sent it to other Internet providers worldwide.
The incident escalated because there were now two routes that conflicted with one another that lead to YouTube. The online protocol, Border Gateway Protocal, favors longer routing addresses because they are said to be more specific. This time however, it resulted in leading 97 major Internet providers and thousands of smaller providers to the dummy route.
It took about two hours for the problem to be corrected. It was mentioned that the only way the time for correcting problems like the one on Suday would increase is for more incidents to occur.
Since then, the video has been removed from the website and access is allowed again.
This is not the first time that a country has blocked access to YouTube for some reason or another. It has happened in China, Morrocco, and Turkey.
Craig Aaron, communications director at Free Press, is worried that blocking access to websites in entire countries might hinder free speech online. What do you think?
On one hand, I do believe that necessary precautions should be taken to keep the peace in a country. On the other hand, I see where Aaron is coming from. It is a granted liberty-freedom of speech. Restricting access somewhat denies this right. While it still may be viewable in other parts of the world online, what difference does it make if the people that need to see it the most can't? Do you think there could be another method for preventing mayhem?
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2 comments:
Not every country is granted the freedom of speech, so in other countries this would not be a issue of rights being infringed on. Perhaps Pakistan made the right move to prevent any issues arising over the video. In any case, if our government could find a solid way of controlling the internet they absolutly would, and I was suprised by what Pakistan did, I was unaware that was even possible.
Pakistan has suspended its constitution, the censorship blackout on Sunday is merely a drop in the bucket for this country. The internet is a frightening tool if your goal is controlling the masses. It provides instant access to anything you'd like to know, all at once. This is a dangerous proposition if you want to "limit" information for whatever reason...in FREEDOM of Speech we trust!
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