YouTube to be unblocked in Pakistan in next 24 hours
Interior Minister Rehman Malik tweeted on Friday evening that a decision has been taken to unblock the site in 24 hours.
PTA is finalizing negotations for acquiring a powerful firewall software to totally block pornographic and blasphemous material.
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) December 28, 2012
I chaird a high level mting w/all stakeholders on the Utube.Gud job by PTA 2 block anti iIslamic material!Pl xpect Utube unblocked in 24hrs
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) December 28, 2012
The move comes almost a month after the minister, whose ministry is not linked to either the Ministry of Information Technology, nor the blocking agency Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), formed a committee to look into ways how the video sharing site could be unblocked while not in conflict with court orders on blasphemous material.
Malik has maintained on numerous occasions that any decision to unblock the site would be taken by the Cabinet, where it was decided to block the site in the first place. His tweet indicates that the government, after failing to convince Google, or YouTube, has managed to put in place individual blocks on urls for the video in a work around to reopen the site.
The site had been blocked on September 17, 2012 by the Cabinet in the immediate aftermath of mass riots in Pakistan reacting to a clip from an amateurishly produced sacrilegious film.
Malik added that those who had been pressing him to unblock the site should be happy now.
There was a gr8 demand to unblock Utube from all sections of society esp fellow tweeps..expect the notification tday! Hope u r all happy now
— Rehman Malik (@SenRehmanMalik) December 28, 2012
