*Update: Pakistan has un-blocked YouTube, after the company removed the "blasphemous" video(s) referred to below.
Islamabad,
Pakistan – Following
a country-wide block of Facebook, the Pakistani government has told ISPs in the
country to block Google’s (NASD: GOOG) YouTube, which officials said contains
"blasphemous" material, Reuters reported.
YouTube was previously
blocked in Pakistan
in 2007 over videos deemed to be un-Islamic; along with Facebook, sites
including Wikipedia and Flickr are also currently inaccessible.
Pakistan
blocked Facebook in response to a page created on the site encouraging users to
post drawings of the prophet Mohammad; representations of the prophet are
considered blasphemous to many Muslims.
A spokesman for the Pakistan
Telecommunication Authority told Reuters it tried to block some 450 individual
pages on YouTube, "but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we
ordered a total shut down."
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/wkvji
(Reuters)
http://snipurl.com/wkvp2
(DMW previous coverage)
no its not unblocked..