14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is once again being threatened with a country-wide ban, this time along with Google and possibly other large websites, if the sites don't cooperate with the country's anti-terrorism efforts.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik threatened that Google, YouTube and others could be blocked in the country and local representatives taken to court if they don't help the country's Federal Investigation Agency in tracking down terrorists using the services.
He didn't specify exactly how terrorists were using YouTube or Google and what the sides could do and haven't done so far, but he said that those involved in the Mumbai attacks used Google, possibly Gmail's VoIP service, to communicate.
This, he believes, makes Google liable and legal action should be taken against the company for its involvement. He didn't specify what the involvement was, aside from providing a useful service to millions of people.
He also didn't specify what measures Google and other websites could take to prevent this type of issues or in what ways the company can cooperate with law enforcement.
But that didn't stop him from starting an investigation against the head of Google Pakistan. Malik claimed that legal action was underway against the local branch.
YouTube in particular has seen its fair share of blocks in many countries. It is still blocked in China and several other places. It was blocked for several years in Turkey.
The site, along with Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr and several others were temporarily blocked in Pakistan last year.
More recently, Pakistan moved to ban online encryption through a new law that came into effect. While the extent of the law is still being debated, it could mean that any online encryption could be banned, effectively crippling the web.
So a ban of YouTube and other sites is a possibility. That said, the same interior minister claimed that jealous girlfriends and wives were behind the majority of assassinations in the Pakistani city of Karachi.