Ban YouTube in Smart Way

YouTube Ban is negatively effecting Students and Businesses

Government action of YouTube ban was taken upon video clips of Blasphemy movie Innocence of Muslims uploaded to YouTube. On one hand, the content of the video inflamed the religious sensitivity of Muslim population, resulted in revolts and violent protests causing a lot of damage of life & property, seemingly, justifies the Government’s decision, but on the other hand, the ban has negatively affected the knowledge workers, students and businesses across the nation.

Students are unable to view the educational contents posted on YouTube by their own educational institutes as well as by other educational institutes from developed countries. This leaves them one step behind in updated knowledge from the students of other countries. Thousands of Islamic videos and lectures by leading Muslim scholars are no longer accessible, most of which are only available on YouTube.

Similarly, businesses have also been affected in the same way. Online businesses are suffering because a leading platform to market their services is inaccessible. Interactive tutorials, guidelines videos and seminars are not accessible. Though some businesses have managed to access the YouTube through proxy servers but this add an extra cost to their organizational budget. The cost of such services has been paid in foreign currency, thus indirectly harming the countries economy, by spending our foreign reserves on an additional source.

The institutions including Virtual University of Pakistan, The Institute of Chartered Accountants Pakistan, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad, National University of Sciences and Technology. Various Pakistani universities maintained their own YouTube channels on which they post videos related to academics and school activities. The videos benefit not just students enrolled at specific institutes, but anyone with access to YouTube. YouTube is used by students in Pakistan as a tool to supplement their academics.

Before YouTube ban, there were 13,049,489 views on YouTube for videos from just six educational institutions in Pakistan that used the website to place their video lectures. The total numbers of views for Islamic & educational contents on YouTube were 1,199,368,564, while the total worldwide views of the objectionable film, The Innocence of Muslims, on YouTube were 1,965,186, just 0.164 percent of the former.

More than one billion unique users visit YouTube each month to watch six billion hours of videos that belong to different categories, most of which contribute to knowledge acquisition, 70% of that traffic and viewership is from outside of the United States.

YouTube host a diverse range of available content from lectures to seminars, and ‘How to’ videos and documentaries posted by professionals such as TED Talks and National Geographic. The leading universities in the world also had their own YouTube channels where they post subject-related content.

A survey conducted on the use of internet in Pakistan, particularly the use of video sharing websites such as YouTube. The survey received 250 responses of which 41.60% were students (highest in number), followed by professionals such as employers, entrepreneurs and self employed people, representing 43.20% of the respondents. Twelve percent were from the media and the academia, while the remaining 3.2% included the government and law enforcement officials. It proved that the educational use of YouTube (82.8%) was higher than that of its use for entertainment & etc, which was 76.8%.

Instead of blocking the whole YouTube website, we should implement a method to filter and block the hatred material / URLs. A blacklist of URLs controlled by popular voting of the internet users can be made available to both users and the ISPs to serve as a default filter, where if users or ISP operator finds a content unsuitable can vote and Black List it into an automatically operating filter list. This way even if someone re-uploads the unsuitable material to another URL, it will be blocked by users or ISP operators as soon as it is identified. Vote it, add it to Black list, review it and finally it will be added to blocked list.
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Tags: pakistan, pakistan media, youtube

Category: Business