Pakistan to block YouTube, Google, Bing, et al

Court finds content offensive

A Pakistani court has ordered the country's Telecommunications Authority to block access to nine web sites including Google, Yahoo, YouTube, FaceBook and Bing for hosting  material offensive to Muslims.

Judge Mazhar Iqbal said the 'blasphemous' sites purveyed "material against the fundamental principals of Islam and its preaching," and should be blocked forthwith.

But according to AFP the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has not yet been told about the court's missive so the sites are still accessible.

"We have not yet received any directives from the ministry of information technology. The ministry is the decision-making authority," a PTA spokesman told the news agency.

The nine web sites the Judges orderd to be blocked are Google, Yahoo, Amazon, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, Islam Exposed, In The Name of Allah and Bing.

Pakistan recently blocked Facebook after some prankster started a competition to draw cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, which is a bit of a sore subject for muslims. The ban was lifted after the page mysteriously disappeared from the social network.