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Pakistan Lifts YouTube Ban For 3 Minutes, Finds More Blasphemy

Posted by timothy on from the reality-preempts-the-onion dept.

On Saturday, Pakistan briefly lifted the months-old ban on YouTube, spurred by the widely distributed U.S.-made video presented as a trailer for a film titled "Innocence of Muslims" and decried in many places around the world as blasphemous toward Islam. "After months of criticism of the ban, the government decided to allow Pakistanis to have access to YouTube again, saying steps had been taken to ensure that offensive content would not be visible. But those efforts apparently failed, and the authorities quickly backtracked," writes the New York Times. "Quickly" is right: access to YouTube was apparently open for just three minutes, which seems about right; it shouldn't take longer than that to discover things on the site to which adherents of any particular religion might take umbrage. What's surprising is that this took lifting the censorship on a wide scale, rather than just taking a smaller peek through tunneling software.

8 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Only 3 minutes!? by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny

    Even Pakistan has better broadband than we do.

    [Sigh]

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Only 3 minutes!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's because they don't have to deal with the bandwidth of people downloading youtube videos.

  2. Ban the Transistor! by MarkvW · · Score: 4, Funny

    The darn transistor is the root of all blasphemy. It should be banned from the nation-states of the faithful!

    1. Re:Ban the Transistor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I say the transistor is the will of God. We are now enemies.

    2. Re:Ban the Transistor! by alienzed · · Score: 5, Funny

      Isn't religion the root of all blasphemy?

      --
      Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
    3. Re:Ban the Transistor! by Cinder6 · · Score: 5, Funny

      My (likely--hopefully--erroneous) understanding of Islam is that everything is the will of Allah. If that's the case, then Allah wills blasphemy. Thus, it stands to reason that blasphemy doesn't exist, because (presumably) anything Allah does is holy.

      I hope my understanding is wrong, because that's more insanity than I'm comfortable with.

      --
      If you can't convince them, convict them.
  3. Re:Who cares? by arielCo · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm surprised it was up for a full 3 minutes.

    Must... resist...

    That's what SHE said!

    Sorry, had to.

    --
    This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
  4. Re:Censorship backfire by PowerBook2k · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pakistan: "This content not available in your religion."