Today (Wednesday) is the 141st day of banning world’s largest video sharing web portal YouTube, in Pakistan. The website was banned by the government after countrywide protests against the anti-Islam video Innocence of Muslims which was not removed by YouTube. On 28th December 2012, the ban was lifted but imposed again after few hours following the continued presence of the offensive video.
Masses are still angered by the presence of the video and Youtube’s refusal to take it down. At the same time, there have been calls by internet users to restore the use of Youtube. This situation is extremely challenging for the authorities concerned.
“The purpose of using You Tube is far beyond listening music and downloading movies. We watch documentaries, tutorials, lectures and other informative videos regarding academic needs,” Muhammad Usman, a student at International Islamic University, Islamabad told Pakistan Today.
Haithem Nasir, Islamabad correspondent of a Dubai based TV channel said, “This is no way to protest the video. Everyone uses YouTube whenever they like because the site is still accessible by different proxies. Technically, YouTube is not suffering. Users of the website in Pakistan are.”
Pakistan saw a revolution in telecommunication and information technology industry. There were 12 million internet users in 2006 and as of 2011, the number was up to 31 million. Unfortunately, the government and the private sector did not take any mentionable steps towards web development and the quality of government websites is a glaring example of the lack of innovation in web development in the country.
Abdul Khaliq, a senior software engineer at a private firm said, “Professionals working in the field of web or software development are suffering due to the ban on YouTube. We can not take the benefit of online tutorials and videos released by international firms.”
When asked about developing a local web video portal, he said, “It is about three stages, one of them is need of storage media, second is cloud computing and the third is data to attract audience. It can be possible if government engages private sector and facilitates them. In China, YouTube and many other sites including Google are not used. China has its own search engines and web video portals.”
Requests from Pakistan and other countries to remove the anti-Islam video are not new. In the past, Google (YouTube’s parent company) has removed videos upon requests from affected parties.
In 2008, during the Russia-Georgia conflict, a video from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart making fun of the Georgian and US presidents was removed by YouTube. In 2010, site removed Anwar al-Aulaqi’s videos when US government officials alleged that he was preaching Jihad and working for Al-Qaeda. The video claiming responsibility for the 2010 Moscow Metro bombings was removed, along with all videos of Doku Umarov (a Chechen militant known as Bin Laden of Russia) and Kavkaz Center (Chechen internet agency) were removed for having “inappropriate content.”
