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"What we need to know now is whether this was a mistake or a deliberate attempt by Pakistan to disrupt YouTube"
Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for a near global blackout of the site on Sunday.
Times Newspaper wrote:
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority ordered the country's 70 internet service providers to block YouTube because it contained “blasphemous content, videos and documents”, government officials said.
Google, the owner of YouTube, blamed the outage on "erroneous internet protocols", sourced in Pakistan
BBC News has learned that the nearly two-hour long blackout was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and internet service provider PCCW.
The country ordered ISPs to block the video-sharing website because of content deemed offensive to Islam.
The BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, says that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site.
YouTube suffered a two-hour long, system-wide outage on Sunday that the company said was triggered by a network based in Pakistan.
"For about two hours, traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet Protocols," said YouTube spokesperson Ricardo Reyes in a statement "Many users around the world could not access our site. We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again."
The BBC reported that Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube may have inadvertently caused the outage. Earlier in the day, Pakistan's shutoff access to YouTube inside the country in response to the posting of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, which have outraged many Muslims.
The BBC Web site's technology editor, Darren Waters, says that it's likely that--to prevent Pakistan's residents from accessing the site--Pakistan Telecom hijacked YouTube's IP and passed that information on to the country's Internet service providers so that queries to YouTube would be redirected. However, the details were apparently leaked by Asian ISP PCCW, leading Internet service providers around the world to mistakenly block YouTube, the BCC reported.
Engineers at YouTube were able to lift the blockade after contacting PCCW, according to the report.
Quote:
"This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom," an unidentified "leading net professional" told the BBC. "There's nothing to suggest this was malicious."
Keynote Systems, a company that measures Web site performance, first logged YouTube's outage at 10:48 a.m. PT, and the site did not come back online until about 12:51 p.m.
Attempts to log on to the Google-owned site typically timed out. Keynote is unable to uncover the causes of an outage, said Shawn White, Keynote's director of operations, but he added that he would be shocked if one country had the ability to bring down YouTube globally.
BBC on the Cause of the Ban wrote:
Reports said Pakistan made the move because YouTube content included Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many.
But one report said a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative light, was behind the ban.
"They [Pakistan's telecommunications authority] asked us to ban it immediately... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice," said Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers.
The government decision has caused uproar in Pakistan, according to Wahaj-us-Siraj:
"Users are quite upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything.
"The government has valid reason for that, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular websites, people will stop using the internet."
Other countries that have temporarily blocked access to YouTube include Turkey and Thailand.
Quote:
The Pakistani government caused a global outage of the popular video-sharing site YouTube.com after an attempt to censor the site within the country accidentally caused internet service providers (ISPs) around the world to block the website for two hours.
Pakistani officials ordered the site to be blocked within Pakistan because it contains material that they believe to be anti-Islamic. However, the redirect that the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority assigned to YouTube.com’s IP address was somehow distributed among the world’s ISPs – meaning that visitors to the site in all countries were confronted with an error message.
There is no suggestion that the outage was anything but accidental. However, the fact that one of the world’s most popular websites can be taken down so easily is a stark reminder of the fragility of the Internet.
Siraj explained that the two main backbone providers in Pakistan were dealing differently with the problem - TWA is routing traffic to a proxy then filtering for the specific URL of the offending videos, but PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited) is unable to filter such URLs so has just blocked the whole website.
Anyone in Pakistan trying to access YouTube via the TWA backbone, about 40 per cent of the population, should have access to the site apart from the pages considered by authorities to be offensive.
The site was originally blocked in its entirety by both providers.
Asked if the blockage was really about religion or if politics may have played a role, Siraj told the Reg: "There have been rumours. On Thursday local TV showed some allegations of poll rigging (Pakistan's presidential election was last week), some of this was uploaded onto YouTube and the ban came on Friday. But this is just a hoax, the problem with the videos had been known for some time."
The problem spread beyond Pakistan when YouTube was blocked across the world for more than an hour. It seems this was caused by a vulnerability with how internet routing tables deal with IP numbers. Ars Technica has more here.
iVirtua Update:
YouTube is still blocked in Pakistan but this may just be a temporary situation as moves are reportedly already afoot to resolve the dispute. The Pakistani Government is asking YouTube to remove objectionable content, according to a spokeswoman for the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority. If YouTube removes the content Pakistan may once again let its people post and view video clips on the site.
Sources:
Pakistan's attempt to block YouTube video results in worldwide outage
Bizjournals.com, NC 1 hour ago
YouTube Inc. service was disrupted Sunday for several hours after the Pakistani government reportedly tried to block a video clip that was critical of Islam
Pakistan's censors crash YouTube for everyone
Salon 2 hours ago
On Friday, Pakistan's Internet regulator and censor, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, ordered ISPs in the country to shut down access to YouTube,
YouTube Censorship Sheds Light on Internet Trust
Washington Post, United States -4 hours ago
If you happened to be searching for a video at YouTube.com Sunday afternoon, there's a good chance your browser told you it was unable to locate the entir
Web surfers hit by YouTube blackout
The Press Association - 4 hours ago
Web surfers in the UK were among those hit by a YouTube blackout blamed on Pakistan's attempt to block access to the site. The government in Islamabad told
Pakistan Blamed for Worldwide YouTube Break
New York Times - 5 hours ago
By Mike Nizza If all had gone according to plan, Pakistan would have been the latest government taking part in an unsettling trend from Brazil to Thailand:
Pakistan Blocks Access to YouTube,
Wall Street Journal - 5 hours ago
By JANE SPENCER Service on Google Inc.'s YouTube Web site was disrupted around the world for several hours Sunday after a botched effort by the Pakistan
Pakistan bans YouTube over anti-Islamic film clips
Guardian Unlimited - 20 hours ago
Pakistan's government has banned access to the video-clip website YouTube because of anti-Islamic movies posted on the site, an official said yesterday.
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