KARACHI: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is once again in talks with Google to unblock video sharing site YouTube.
“PTA hopes to unblock YouTube in two to three weeks,” PTA Chairman Farooq Awan told The Express Tribune on Thursday, adding they were in talks with the internet giant.
On September 17, PTA blocked the video sharing website to restrict access to an anti-Islamic video that sparked riots in many Muslim countries.
The internet giant blocked access to the blasphemous video in Libya, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and India, but it didn’t block the video in Pakistan. The government, therefore, directed internet service providers (ISPs) to block the entire site.
The Express Tribune has already reported that PTA has received a directive from the Ministry of Interior with several instructions about unblocking of YouTube, permanent blocking of unregistered SIMs, Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and automated web locking.
The ministry, in its directive, told PTA to restore the video sharing site and manually block blasphemous content using
PTA’s system, according to a source familiar with the matter.
However, PTA doesn’t have any system to manually block thousands of links leading to the anti-Islamic video. It has to be done through ISPs, which is virtually impossible as this will require a huge amount of time and effort.
As seeen on The Express Tribune, November 16th, 2012.
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