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VA49er · Feb 26, 2008 at 8:49 AM

Pakistan ban to blame for YouTube blackout

Pretty sure this ruined someone's day yesterday. Stupid Pakistan.

Pakistan's attempts to block access to video-sharing site YouTube have been blamed for an almost global blackout of the site on Sunday.

The site was banned because of anti-Islamic content. The two-hour blackout was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and internet service provider PCCW, according to reports from the BBC.

Pakistan's government banned access to the site because of anti-Islamic content.

The BBC reported that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube, Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site.

Those details were passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to another address.

But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the world.

The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by engineers at YouTube.

A statement from Google said that the problems lasted for "about two hours".

"Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous internet protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site," it said.

"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."
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