Pakistan imposes YouTube ban - the wrong way!

There are ways of blocking content found on the Internet. Child safety software, filtering built into routers and firewall equipment. Even good ol' Internet Explorer has the capability to some end. While these are all viable ways of stopping users of a particular machine or Internet connection accessing content, it clearly doesn't work in favour of government bans.

Unfortunately, Pakistan went about it the wrong way on Sunday when they caused a 2 hour near global blackout on popular video-sharing website YouTube. The ban was ordered by Pakistan's government in response to the posting of a forthcoming Dutch movie trailer portraying Islam negatively; to enforce the ban it's alleged that Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the Internet address of YouTube's web server. What effectively happens is you can route traffic to a completely different address, display a different website and disable access to the intended website.

The details of the "hijack" were leaked onto the Internet by PCCW, a Hong-Kong Internet provider, and as a result many other ISPs worldwide blocked access to YouTube.

YouTube's owner Google has since confirmed that Pakistan has lifted the country-wide ban and full service has been restored.