14 DAY TRIAL // The Pakistan ban that knocked YouTube unconscious to the floor, for almost two hours, might not be as religious related as the state officials initially hinted. Some local users believe that the blocking of the site was actually closely connected to some footage proving election fraud in the South Asian country. With the result of the ban making it impossible for others to view them, probably the clips have silently been removed.
Looking at it as a political statement, the YouTube crisis flourishes many other disturbing ideas. Pakistan was able to bring a Google-owned site to its knees, and although it really isn't all that difficult to accomplish this (but way above the average level of IT knowledge), the fact that the government went ahead with it is a sign of how little respect it has for users all over the world and how afraid it would have been, if the videos had gotten some decent media exposure.
Another thought that pops to mind is that, because the respective videos are not available any longer, they have been somehow deleted in the blackout. How is that even possible if the service is offline? Manually, that's how, and it requires access to the database. This is, of course, speculating the local users, I have to underline. While I hope they are not right, should they hold the key to the mystery, it's a bad omen for what is to come.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani government has since lifted the embargo on YouTube and all of the country's 70 Internet Service Providers are now able to relay the service once again. The period of time the ban was in place, American company AnchorFree - producers of a free product called HOTSPOT SHIELD, recorded a 1,300 percent increase in Pakistani surfers using it to attempt going around the ban, Web User reports.