Pakistan Monitors Google, Yahoo And Others For Blasphemous Content

The government of Pakistan is monitoring seven major websites and has blocked 17 others for allegedly hosting blasphemous material.

A spokesperson for the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has announced that the websites which will be monitored by the government include Google, Yahoo, MSN, YouTube, Amazon, Hotmail and Bing.

He said: "The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has received orders from the ministry of information technology to monitor these websites, which are being implemented."

He added: "If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website."

A spokesperson for Google has said that it will monitor how the new policies implemented by the Pakistani government will affect user experience on the search engine.

He said: "Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much ... content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our policies."