On 17 September, 2012, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered to block access to YouTube due to sacrilegious video trailer of Sam Bacile’s “Innocence of Muslims” and after the YouTube management had rejected the request of the government of Pakistan to remove such blasphemous content from the website which hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims all over the world.
The banning of YouTube is not the right way to express our anger. Nobody has ever thought, neither the government of Pakistan nor PTA, before taking this decision that what would we gain by this act? Only that we have just blocked our own source of learning and knowledge.
The world is moving so fast and in this competitive era we need the sources which may provide us faster information to achieve our required target in professional, personal and educational fields and YouTube is doing the same job because it is an undeniable fact that YouTube is a platform where all the informative stuff is available.
Despite the ban, a lot of people are still using YouTube through proxy sites or other software and taking advantage of this enlightening site but unfortunately many can’t do so owing to unawareness of proxy sites.
Therefore, I request the PTA and the government of Pakistan to either to block only those URLs which contain such objectionable material or lift the ban so every single person may able to get access and benefit from this website.
FAIZAH MAZHAR
Karachi