ISLAMABAD: It was some blasphemous content that had pushed the authorities to ban video-sharing website YouTube in the country as there were no way to filter the material but now, with everything in place, the only thing missing is the political will.
After banning the website, the Ministry of Information Technology had acquired the ‘missing’ filters with the help of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) and blocked over 4,000 URLs containing the blasphemous content.
After the test run of filters, missing equipment for the monitoring of ‘grey traffic’ was put in place last week to detect and block illegal international incoming voice calls to save losses of billions of rupees incurred by the national exchequer.
The ministry has either developed or acquired the hardware and the software to control the internet but the YouTube is still kept blocked.
“Unfortunately, the decision of reopening the YouTube has become a political matter,” a high ranking official at the IT ministry told The Express Tribune. “The government cannot take the decision while ignoring repercussions,” he added.
He said the ministry was supposed to convene a meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) over the issue but could not find the suitable time to take up the issue. In this connection, he referred to the recent sectarian clashes in that spread all across the country.
“The government will have to face the backlash if it lifts the ban from the video sharing website in given circumstances,” he added.
Responding to a question, he said no proposal was under consideration regarding convening the meeting of the IMC.
The video-sharing website was blocked on September 2012 by the IT ministry on the direction of the IMC following release of a blasphemous movie that triggered violent protests across the country.
A policy directive was also issued by the ministry in May 2012 to the PTA to deploy a state of art solution to block blasphemous and pornographic websites.
The IMC, constituted by the prime minister in 2006, has the mandate to evaluate and restrict offensive online content in Pakistan. The committee is headed by the IT secretary and has representation from different ministries, including interior and religious affairs ministries as well as other agencies.
It was in September when the state minister for MoIT had announced that the missing equipment/software had been acquired and there would soon by the meeting of the IMC for reopening of the YouTube. But it has not happen till date.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had earlier estimated that it would cost $10 million to place the filters to block blasphemous content on the internet. It was claimed that there were eight million URLs that contained blasphemous material.
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