Pakistan LIfts ban on facebook and youtube on May 26 2010 in the cabinet meeting headed by prime minister of Pakistan.
The Pakistani government lifted a ban on video-sharing website YouTube after the company took down “blasphemous” footage but retained a temporary ban on social-networking site Facebook imposed earlier this week, the country’s telecommunications regulator said Thursday.
But a YouTube spokeswoman said Thursday afternoon that the video site is still being blocked there.
A Pakistani Islamist holds a placard during a protest in Karachi against the published caricatures of Prophet Mohammed on Facebook.
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Access to YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., was cut earlier in the day but restored after the San Bruno, California, company had “taken off from their website highly offensive blasphemous footage,” the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said, without specifying what content sparked the ban.
Facebook remained blocked after the Lahore High Court ruled on Wednesday that authorities should shut the site down until May 31.
The High Court was ruling on a petition brought by the Lahore-based Islamic Lawyers Forum, which was protesting a Facebook page called “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!”
Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California, hadn’t taken down the Facebook page as of late Thursday. On Wednesday, Facebook said the content didn’t violate its terms but added that it understood it may not be legal in some countries, the Associated Press reported.
The creators of the page, which has more than 90,000 followers, say in a personal-data entry that the site isn’t meant to be disrespectful to Muslims but is challenging extremists who have threatened violence against people because of their depiction of Muhammad. These include Dutch newspaper Jyllands-Posten and the U.S. animated television series “South Park.”