Google to be monitored for anti-Islamic content by Pakistan

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Google to be monitored for anti-Islamic content by Pakistan

Google is among several high-profile websites which Pakistan is to begin monitoring in an attempt to block content it deems anti-Islamic.

26 Jun 2010

Seven major websites, including Google and Yahoo, will be monitored and 17 lesser-known sites are being blocked outright for alleged blasphemous material under court orders.

The moves follow a temporary ban that Pakistan imposed on Facebook in May.

The sites to be monitored include Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Amazon and MSN, Hotmail and Bing from Microsoft, according to a spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

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

Scott Rubin, a spokesman for Google, responded that the company intends, in turn, to monitor how the new policies affect access to its services.

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."

Yahoo said Pakistan's actions were disappointing. Microsoft and Amazon did not respond immediately.

Despite the order being official, local journalists have been unable to get copies of it from the Ministry of Information Technology, which has already begun the process of barring and monitoring the various sites.

A court in the country banned Facebook for two weeks in May during protests over a page that encouraged users to post images of Mohammed.

Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous. YouTube also was briefly blocked at the time.

The Facebook ban was lifted after the social-networking site blocked the page in Pakistan, but officials said at the time that the government would keep blocking some other, unspecified sites that contain "sacrilegious material".

The Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by student members of radical Islamic groups.

Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the page to be displayed.

It was not the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger.

Pakistan and other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Mohammed, and again in 2008 when they were reprinted.

Later the same year, a suspected al-Qaeda suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six people.

Google to be monitored for anti-Islamic content by Pakistan - Telegraph