Date: Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Two-hour YouTube Crash is blamed on Pakistan

Sunday’s two-hour YouTube crash has been attributed to "erroneous Internet protocols" in Pakistan. These findings coincide with news that the country has decided to ban access to the video sharing website, although Internet security experts have ruled out any foul play.

The crash seems to have been caused accidentally by engineers from Pakistan Telecom, who hijacked YouTube’s address to pass on to Pakistan’s 70 Internet service providers, so that they could restrict access to the site. Unfortunately, it seems that the address was mistakenly leaked to many more Internet service providers, who then accidentally blocked the site too. However, the problem was soon rectified when a YouTube engineer contacted Pakistan Internet service provider PCCW to inform them about the error.

In a statement released on Monday, Google said it would work hard to prevent similar problems from hitting the site in the future. It said: "Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again."

It is thought that the government in Pakistan decided to ban access to YouTube after a number of anti-Islamic films appeared on the site. These were thought to include the trailer to Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ upcoming film, which is said to portray Islam as a fascist religion. It is thought that the government has also blocked access to other sites, including websites that showed the infamous controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Pakistan is certainly not the first country to ban YouTube; Turkey blocked access to the video sharing site in January after videos that insulted the country's founding father were found online. Last year, Thailand also banned access to YouTube after videos were found to insult their monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Source:

Guardian

BBC