Infotech: The Net's not working as expected.
The whole design of the internet was supposed to make it so that a break in one place would mean that communications continued to work. After recent cable breaks disrupted global traffic, YouTube says that its latest problems arose with an ISP in Pakistan, half a world away from YouTube's US servers.
The problem, YouTube says, was due to what amounts to a simple administrative error at an ISP in Pakistan. It put erroneous routing information and led to YouTube connections being misrouted for about two hours. But it was not a local problem - the information propagated around the 'net and led to other mistakes.
The route of the problem was an order from Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority's decision to tell ISPs to block access to YouTube because of what it said was an "anti-Islamic video" which an anonymous user had posted to the site, owned by Google.
Currently, all Pakistan's ISPs are blocking all access to YouTube but they are trying to block access to the specific video. They do not wish or intend that YouTube as an entity should be blocked and would prefer the video to be removed.
This is not the first time that a government has blocked access to youtube.com. In early 2007, Thailand blocked access for four months. Access was restored when YouTube's owner Google agreed to prohibit the posting of offensive videos. That arose out of an offensive video about Thailand's much loved King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Of course, if we may be allowed a little editorialising - there may be other perfectly good reasons for blocking access to YouTube or specific videos. Here's one we found especially offensive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45HzHJ8MozY&feature=related
UPDATE: Tuesday 26 February. YouTube has now removed the video, say reports.
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