Some might say Islam, but I’m thinking ignorance. Pakistan is now blocking Youtube (GN) because of anti-Islamic content. I hear all the cries out there right now… how dare they! These totalitarian regimes need to be stopped! Well, guess what, it’s not the Chinese or the Islamic governments who are alone in this. Schools in your neighborhood are just as likely to do it the moment that they find one thing they don’t like. They will block everything – baby, bathwater – bye bye.
There is no way to consistently tag videos so that the Pro-Islam videos like this one (with over 7700 comments) have no way of getting through as people who want to mess with the system are just as able to put tags in as those who would want to make it work. The same goes for curricular content like this little melting point video that I did. So what are we to do?
There are plenty of ways that students get around school firewalls (Getting around Roadblocks) and I’m sure that there is something similar for national firewalls. So what is the point? <tin hat>Well… maybe it’s the same as with DRM – control information… make certain types of knowledge illegal… </tin hat>
PS – This wasn’t related, but certainly had interesting timing – Pakistan brings down YouTube.
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