You have probably heard about Pakistan Telecom and what they did to YouTube last week. Computerworld calls it, rightly, Sabotage.

Sabotage. That’s the right word for what Pakistan Telecom did to YouTube on the last Sunday in February. It was intended to be censorship — blocking Pakistanis from seeing a video that their government found offensive. But it resulted in all of YouTube vanishing from the Internet for up to two hours.

If you think that’s merely another silly noncrisis that doesn’t mean anything to your IT shop or business, think again.

What happened? Pakistan Telecom (PT) got instructions from a government agency to block a specific YouTube video, which reportedly included the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have sparked periodic riots since they were first published in Denmark in September 2005.

So it looks like the target was not really YouTube, but YouTube customers in Pakistan. If Pakistan wants to censor its citizens then that is between the Pakistani government and its citizens.

It does, however, bring even a bigger question as to why YouTube caved in on this issue. This from Investor’s Business Daily:

YouTube has agreed to scrub material critical of radical Islam after Pakistan’s religious police crashed the popular site in protest. Score another one for the Islamofascists.

[…]

Meantime, YouTube is giving in to its blackmailers in Pakistan by removing “highly profane and sacrilegious footage” that was offensive to Islam, including cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Pakistan’s religious police, in turn, issued instructions to all local ISPs to unblock YouTube, “as the specific content has been removed by the Web site.”

Islamabad pontificated that the offending material “absolutely stands against the values of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence.” This from a state that crucifies Muslim apostates and Christian “blasphemers” and refuses to peacefully coexist with Hindus in Kashmir.

We recall how Islamabad reacted with equal fulmination after the pope, in a 2006 speech, linked Islam to violence. “Anyone who describes Islam as intolerant encourages violence,” Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Tasnim Aslam said.

So Islam is so tolerant it will attack anyone who says it is not? Something is wrong with this picture. YouTube has bowed to the demands of terrorists and emboldened those who attack the west.

I have looked to find a copy of the video which was blocked - if I find it on another service I will be sure to post it here.

**Update** The video which caused all this grief is a trailer to the upcoming moving Fitna. The 1389 Blog puts all the pieces together.

Also reporting:
Stop The ACLU