YouTube was recently unblocked in Pakistan, after Eid-ul-Fitar. The government has given in in this small way to civil protests against the harsh Internet restrictions placed on them by the government. But many other services continue to be restricted under the county’s censorship regulations. VPN providers like iVPN continue to aid citizens and residents in reclaiming free Internet access.

Rules for Partial YouTube Access

The Pakistan government has made a concession regarding YouTube. The website was universally blocked across Pakistan in September 2012 by then Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf after it refused to remove the anti-Islamic movie “Innocence of the Muslims”. The content was deemed offensive and sparked unrest in several Islamic countries.

The country will not however totally unblock the service. An inter-ministerial meeting was called for the purpose of reviewing how the site could be unblocked while maintaining censorship over undesirable content, specifically videos and comments considered blasphemous to the nations Muslim population. The Secretaries of Information Technology, the Interior and officials of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) are key participants.

The PTA is waiting for the appointment of PTA chairman and its members before taking any steps to unblock the video sharing website. The current blocks were authorized by a 12-member committee last month headed by Minister of State for Information Technology Anusha Rehman. The committee has so far blocked over 2200 websites that they deemed to contain”objectionable content”. Rehman assured users that YouTube would be unblocked as soon as they can be sure that individual instances of offensive content on the site can be blocked.

Total Access Preferred and Possible

Many are applauding this move to partially unblock the popular video sharing site. Most, however, would prefer to not have their content pre-digested for them. For those who would like to once again enjoy free Internet access, iVPN is a good tool to use. The VPN service can fully unblock access to YouTube and all other restricted websites, as well as any blocked Internet enabled applications, like instant messaging. Pakistanis have used web proxies to unblock websites, but have found this solution to be unstable and unsecure.

Web proxies are not always compatible with the websites that users wish to access, like Facebook. The competition for web proxies is also very tough, with thousands of users competing for the use of a few IPs. Bandwidth is stretched thin, and most users can therefore not enjoy the service. Streaming and downloading become impossibly slow, among other things. Additionally, web proxies are easily detected and blocked, and though new sites are opened daily to cope with the blocking, the process has proved tedious and frustrating to users. A better alternative is iVPN, which is a secure connection that cannot be easily traced or blocked. Web proxies are closely monitored by many governments, so using proxies attracts unwanted attention to the user. iVPN on the other hand is completely anonymous and safe for users. It is compatible with most desktops and operating systems with multihop capabilities. There is enough bandwidth to go around, and the privacy of users is assured.

iVPN is a well-known VPN provider that has been serving users around the world for four years. For more details on iVPN or to compare them with other top VPN services, please access the reviews from our top VPN providers page.

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