It was a small mistake with major consequences. According to the BBC, in a domino effect, a decision by Pakistan to block YouTube led to the site being unavailable globally for over an hour yesterday. Reportedly, the country blocked the site because it contained content deemedoffensive to Islam, although no one seemed absolutely certain what that was. Some believed it was because YouTube had the Danish cartoons regarding Muhammad that caused an uproar before, while otherssaid it was because of a trailer for a new film by Dutchman Geer Wilders, which is very negative about the religion. Whatever the root cause, the BBC believes Pakistan Telecom hijacked YouTube’s server address, and passed the details to the country’s ISPs. This meant that whenever a Pakistani user attempted toaccess YouTube, they were re-directed elsewhere. The larger issue appears to have arisen because an engineer at ISP PCCW leaked out information of thehijack, which brought a global block – at least until YouTube engineers informed PCCW of the problem, after which all was corrected. Needless to say, joining the Ban YouTube club –which includes Thailand and Turkey, among others – hasn’t helped the government’s popularity in Pakistan. Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet ServiceProviders, said, "They [Pakistan's telecommunications authority] asked us to ban it immediately… and the order says the ban will continue until further notice. 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 stopusing the internet."
Tag Archive: Muhammad
Pakistan Causes YouTube Disruption
Wikipedia Temporarily Bans Qatar
On its surface, Wikipedia seems like a tremendous thing: create a globally accessible online encyclopedia, constantly expanded, updated, and corrected by the entire Internet community. And, indeed, the project has gained substantial momentum over the years, sprouting innumerable localized versions and finding the accuracy of its science articles favorably compared to the famed Encyclopedia Britannica.
Yet the collaborative nature of Wikipedia makes it vulnerable to pranks, article vandalism, and users editing articles to put their preferred spin on events, people, and topics. Last year, Wikipedia saw U.S. political operatives engaged in partisan vandalism as they malevolently edited articles describing political opponents; now, Wikipedia has slapped a 12-hour ban on anonymous posts originating from the Persian Gulf state of Qatar due to “chronic vandalism and spam”.
‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ Biggest TiVo Moment
Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson stole the show during Sunday’s Super Bowl, attracting almost twice as many viewers as the most thrilling moments on the field, according to an annual measurementof second-by-second viewership in TiVo households.
The Jackson-Timberlake moment drew the biggest spike in audience reaction TiVo has ever measured. TiVo said viewership spiked up to 180 percent as hundreds of thousands of households used TiVo’s unique capabilities to pause and replay live television to view the incident again and again. Overall, the halftime extravaganza had a powerful grip on viewers. According to TiVo’s analysis of aggregated data from an anonymous sample of 20,000 households, viewership of the game’s intermission increased by 12 percent compared to last year’s halftime show.
