IDG News Service - Many users around the world could not access YouTube Inc.'s site for about two hours on Sunday. The video-sharing company blamed the outage on erroneous routing information introduced by a Pakistani Internet service provider. Pakistani authorities ordered ISPs there to block the site on Friday.
Traffic to YouTube was misrouted for around two hours, rendering the site inaccessible for many users around the world, YouTube said today."We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan," the company said, adding that it is still investigating the problem to prevent it from happening again.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered the country's ISPs to block users' access to YouTube on Friday because of an inflammatory anti-Islamic video on the site, said Wahaj us Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers, in a telephone interview.
"If the video is provocative, then it is better it is removed, rather than provoke unrest in Pakistan," said Siraj, who added that he did not know the contents of the video.
Access to YouTube is still blocked in Pakistan while ISPs work with the Pakistani authority to narrow its order to block a single URL pointing to the video, Siraj said. He said he expects the PTA to make an order to that effect later on Monday.
Steven Schwankert in Beijing contributed to this report.
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