They say that out of sight is out of mind. But when something essential (or even desirable) goes out of service, its yearning or longing only grows with time. The latter seems to be the case with YouTube users in Pakistan who would visit the website for both education and infotainment purposes.
More than nine months have passed since this popular video sharing platform was ordered shut by the Pakistani government, as a ‘policy response’ to a sacrilegious video that had flared religious sensitivities across the Muslim world. Neither has Google Inc. come around to accepting government requests to take down this video for Pakistani users, nor has the government figured a way out yet to restore the service.
Few will disagree that YouTube has evolved as an enabling platform – a bastion of knowledge and information for students, teachers, researchers, programmers, artists and musicians alike. People learn new skills, or develop the existing ones, through emulation when they do the traditional ‘how to’ searches on this visual training platform. This goes unnoticed, but YouTube could be an essential service for many.
Unfortunately, the YouTube restoration issue has assumed religious connotation – much to the detriment of people who depend on this service for knowledge and training. One had hoped that the new government would use some of its political capital to restore the service. In fact, after being sworn in, the Minister of IT signalled that YouTube restoration was on top of her agenda.
Now the Minister has reportedly formed a four-member team to review the blasphemous content on YouTube. The Minister will review the report and then take it to an “inter-ministerial committee”. The final decision will rest with the committee whether or not to put YouTube back on air. Yet this approach doesn’t inspire much confidence.
That is because the government is looking at the issue through the same prism (read: religious sentiments) which the previous government used while banning the service. Therefore, the inter-ministerial committee is bound to feel pressured, may fail to find the exit door, and therefore, keep the ban intact.
The fact is that following the September protests, Pakistan was among a handful of Muslim countries that blocked YouTube. The service remains operational, even in large Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Egypt. Even Bangladesh, which immediately responded by banning the service just as Pakistan did, lifted the ban last month, perhaps realising the reactionary and self-defeating nature of the ban.
One understands that the government has to walk a fine line here: respect the public’s religious sensitivity on the matter while not depriving the population of a tremendous source of knowledge. But rather than appeasing one segment’s demands at the expense of the other, the government must find a way to ensure that the two can coexist. And thankfully, there is a way through which that can be done.
Telecom authorities have long been planning on introducing a national URL filtering system which will provide the capability to block blasphemous and pornographic web contents at the basic, URL level. Once that filter is in place, the PTA and the ISPs can block the URLs linked to that video, clearing the way for YouTube’s restoration. That way, everyone gets their closure to this saga.
So, the government should focus on installing the URL filter immediately, rather than forming layers of committees that will only drag the issue at hand.
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