YouTube pointed the virtual finger at Pakistan as the country attempted to block complete access to the media sharing website on Sunday. The blame has been put squarely on Pakistan's' shoulders as the site nearly "blacked out" on a world scale
YouTube lashed out at Pakistan over the weekend blaming the country for a near miss on Sunday as the site almost "blacked-out."
Telecom in Pakistan was to blame as access to Google's YouTube went down for nearly two hours due to the telecommunications provider and Internet service business, PCCW.
The blocked access was down to religious reasons as the site has long been seem to be offensive to the Islamic faith. Pakistan took charge and ordered all ISP's to block users trying to access the site by blocking those trying to get on to it. According to Pakistan sources, Danish cartoons were being exposed on the YouTube site which were seen to be against Prophet Muhammad which forced many to complain.
The BBC learned that Telecom had actually "hijacked" address for YouTube making anyone trying to access the media sharing site in the country, fail. The routes to the address where temporarily damaged meaning that the site could not be found.
Yet what appeared to be a "good turn" by Pakistan went globally wrong. Due to the address for YouTube snatched away, the information on the "hijack" was spread around nearly all ISP's providers across the world accidentally, making the site almost impossible to be accessed from anywhere last weekend.
The global block was eventually lifted when PCCW were made aware of the fault by YouTube themselves.
In a statement made by Google, it said,
"Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet protocols, and 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."
Speaking to the BBC as an expert on the subject, a spokesperson said,
"This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There's nothing to suggest this was malicious."
Wahaj-us-Siraj, who is the convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers 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 stop using the Internet."
It is thought that Turkey and Thailand have also blocked access to YouTube for the same reasons.
