Pakistan YouTube Ban Propagates Worldwide, Causing Major YouTube Outage

Feb 25, 2008 at 8:31am ET by Barry Schwartz

Yesterday, I kept noticing Twitters of YouTube problems. Soon after, the BBC reported YouTube outage blamed on Pakistan. It appears that the recent Pakistan ban of YouTube not only caused Pakistan ISPs to block YouTube, but also spread worldwide and stopped users from even the United States from accessing YouTube.

How so? The two-hour YouTube “blackout” was reportedly initiated when Pakistan ordered ISPs to block the video-sharing website. One ISP supposedly pushed the request in a more global manner, which caused more ISPs to block YouTube. I personally don’t understand how something like this could have happened. I suspect I am missing one critical detail.

An internet professional told the BBC:

This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There’s nothing to suggest this was malicious.

All this started over someone uploading Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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