Outage Outrage

So Pakistan is being blamed for the short outage of YouTube yesterday (BBC News online). It's not the first time that the video sharing site has been blocked either. China has had a bash, and so has Iran.

The correspondent writes: "BBC News has learned that the nearly two-hour long blackout was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and internet service provider PCCW. The country ordered ISPs to block the video-sharing website because of content deemed offensive to Islam ... to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom hijacked the web server address of the popular video site. Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address. "

So it's all about religious sensibility again is it? Just where is the 'fun' in fundamentalism I ask you? Those decent folk at Google (YouTube's owners) are absolutely livid of course, because they don't see why one country's actions in blocking YouTube video content should be able to cause their servers to shut down, on an almost global basis for nearly two hours. How can one censor decide what the entire world is going to watch...? I'm sure they are asking. And Google are right. We must all be free to decide. That is what democracy is all about.

With my last ounce of strength, I will fight to defend the right of millions of users to have as much access as they want to mediocre, jerky content, poor quality grainy footage and endlessly inane comments.