Islamabad: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority received a directive from the Ministry of Information technology on Monday to restore YouTube service within 48hours.
Spokesman of the Ministry of Information Technology Sagheer Anwar Wattoo and PTA officials confirmed to issue the directive.
As the service is blocked for time being, the service is still not accessible to some internet service providers without the use of a secure (http) protocol or VPN/proxy.
By posting a photo to its official Facebook page the Pakistan Telecommunications company limited welcomed the move.
All the arguments for unblocking YouTube are complete and the standard operating procedures have been checked which is said by the PTA officials. All blasphemous content had been blocked on the localized version of YouTube are claimed by the Officials.
Informed the content has been removed along with Google’s cooperation by the IT ministry, PTA, Ministry of Religious Affairs and other agencies who were part of a committee formed to tackle the issue.
PTA Spokesman Khurram Mehran earlier confirmed the Google had launched a localized version of YouTube in Pakistan which did not feature any of the controversial content.
Google had launched a localized version of YouTube in Pakistan which did not feature any of the controversial content by the PTA Spokesman Khurram Mehran.
PTA given a reply on the YouTube ban said that on verification of this version by Google and PTA of the website does not contain any known copies of the offending material.
The PTA said if any copy appears on the website in the future, Google has “provided an online web process through which requests for blocking access [to] the offending material can be made by PTA to Google directly and Google/YouTube will accordingly restrict access to the said offending material for users within Pakistan”
Google has made it possible for the Pakistani Government to ask for the removal of objectionable videos from YouTube, this is acknowledged by PTA.
Initially YouTube was blocked in Pakistan on September 18, 2012, as the violent protests broke out all over country in reaction to blasphemous film uploaded on the website’s servers that outraged Muslims all across the world.
Once ban was lifted in early 2013,but only for a few hours after which the website was again officially inaccessible to Pakistan users.