Lord of the flies

March 31, 2014

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), after allocating considerable resources to searching for objectionable material online (during what must have been an awkward few days at the office) concluded that despite blocking 31,819 websites, it was an impossible task to block all the offensive content on the internet. It is hardly surprising when you consider that the seemingly all-knowing Google has only documented an estimated 0.004% of the internet, raising questions as to the futility of such an exercise. The point is not to ridicule PTA (not entirely), but state policies that dictate these impractical initiatives. Of course, censorship is not limited to Pakistan, and a plethora of claims can be made against the self-righteous advocates of free speech in the West, but we should not aim to exist in a perpetual state of ‘catching-up’ with their ideals, and should instead strive to set a positive benchmark ourselves. For a website where a hundred hours of video are uploaded every minute, to block YouTube on the basis of a low-budget anti-Muslim movie trailer only serves to demonstrate our collective insecurities regarding religion.
The YouTube ban only set a precedent for further restrictions, but despite the aforementioned trailer now being removed from the website, the continued failure of the government to restore it highlights the political nature of the ban transcending its supposedly religious roots. Activists rightly point to the educational aspect of YouTube, which has evolved into a dynamic hub of information, but that should not be the main argument. Any negotiation based on the perceived merits and demerits of restricting content should be completely overlooked as it only serves to lend legitimacy to the ban. It should not matter whether your primary use of the website is educational or to watch videos of kittens; it’s a rights issue. To surrender it now, only ensures further limitations being placed in the future. This is not a fight for YouTube, but against censorship. Freedom of choice is not a fad that can be subscribed to or disregarded at will; instead it is an essential struggle in ensuring that no individual or organisation can act as a supreme arbiter, to determine for you, what is right, wrong, true or false. If the Pakistani government really must play the role of the ‘nanny state’; it would be far better served by the forceful implementation of policies on education, health and child Labour , rather than attempting to censor the 10% of the population that actually has access to the internet.