Pakistani Internet service providers
may have inadvertently blocked the popular YouTube Web site
across the world at the weekend when they restricted local
access to the site, a telecommunications official said.
YouTube said on Monday that many users around the world
could not access the site for about two hours because traffic
had been routed according to erroneous Internet protocols.
The source of the problem was a network in Pakistan,
YouTube said in a statement.
Pakistan ordered local Internet service providers to block
access to the site because it was running material insulting to
Islam, a Pakistani industry official said on Sunday.
A government telecommunications official said the initial
order to restrict local access might have mistakenly affected
users around the world.
"The blocking of the Web site within the country might have
mistakenly affected its worldwide service, briefly," said the
official, who declined to be identified.
But there had been no intention to block the site
worldwide, he said.
Attempts to access YouTube in Islamabad on Sunday were met
with a generic error message saying the site was unavailable.
A spokesman for the state telecommunications regulator, the
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said on Tuesday the order
had been lifted after Youtube removed the content deemed
insulting to Islam.
"YouTube had been asked to remove the link, which they did,
and we have subsequently ordered the unblocking of the site,"
the spokesman said.
The authority had earlier justified its order to block
access in Pakistan saying it was necessary to avoid unrest in
the overwhelming Muslim country of 160 million people.
"It has the potential to cause more unrest and possible
loss of life and property across the country," the authority
said in a statement on Monday, referring to the material.
Publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad
published in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked widespread anger
and deadly protests in several Muslim countries, including
Pakistan.
Protests have been held in recent weeks in Pakistan after
the republication of one of the cartoons.
On Tuesday, about 150 students staged a rally in the
eastern city of Multan city and burned Danish and U.S. flags to
express anger over the reprinting of the cartoon.