WASHINGTON-- Pakistani authorities' efforts to block access to the video-sharing Web site YouTube from Internet addresses in their own country effectively shut down the site altogether at the weekend, disrupting access to it by would-be visitors from all over the world.The outage, which appears to have been the result of an error, blocked traffic to the site for about two hours Sunday, and experts say it demonstrates the fragile quality of the Internet, which is a network based largely on trust.
On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, the country's telecom regulator, ordered Internet service providers in Pakistan to block access to a YouTube video -- a trailer for a controversial film about the koran being made by Dutch politician Geert Wilders.