42Bytes

This year, thanks to my friend Nathan over at PixlDesign, I will be participating in Shutdown Day. The Shutdown Day Website describes SDay as “a Global Internet Experiment whose purpose is to get people to think about how their lives have changed with the increasing use of the home computer, and whether or not any good things are being lost because of this.”

The simple idea of the experiment is for people to shutdown their computer for 24 hours and explore what great and mystical things lie beyond the monitor. Everyone who has a computer can participate as well as all they have to do is pledge their allegiance at the website, www.shutdownday.org, and turn off their computers for 24 hours on May 3.

And this isn’t a small thing, last year when the project began they had 65,000 people actually shut down their computers for 24 hours and this hopefully will be larger this year.

Well, I’ve pledged my allegiance. My blog and computer will be off all of Saturday, Australian Eastern Local Time. Have fun…not with your computer!

It was a normal day, the 24th of February, 2008. People were watching Will It Blend? and Leeroy Jenkins on their favourite video site YouTube. That all came to an end at 6:45pm UTC when the Pakistani Government ordered the blocking of the site and managed to take the rest of the world with them.

It all started when the Pakistan Government issued an order to block YouTube because of “offensive content”. The offensive content they were referring to was that of a video of cartoons that made fun of Muhammad from a Danish born cartoonist. Once the order had been isssued, for some unknown reason, a Pakistan Telecom went further and globally broadcast instructions claiming to be the destination for anyone trying to reach YouTube’s various Internet addresses. The flaw was that routers worldwide followed these instructions and directed someone looking for the Numa Numa Guy to an error page. The people who provide the Pakistan Telecom’s Internet connection, Chinese-based PCCW, did not bother to filter the broadcast and allowed it to be sent worldwide.

And just like that, forty-five seconds pass and YouTube is gone for most of the world. People who expected to see funny cats, were left disappointed. YouTube responded fiercely as it fought back trying to overrule the false broadcast with one of their own. Over two long hours, it worked with the number of network providers slowly dropping the false route and returning web-surfers to their beloved site.

All of this may have been an honest mistake, then again, it could’ve been Pakistan getting revenge for the disrespect of their religious figure. We can’t tell exactly what happened but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did plan it. It would be within the operations of the current Pakistani government to do such a thing with riots continuing even after “fair” elections. The Pakistani population, being comprised of mainly Muslims, would find this offensive and be able to justify the blocking of YouTube. In my eyes, I would call it anti-democratic - restricting the freedom speech for all people.

With YouTube back online and serving millions of videos a day to it’s users, the crisis sends a clear message. We need find these flaws and fix the Internet…because I don’t how long I will last not seeing the Crazy German Kid on my screen again.