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The arguments about China’s Internet tactics and the role of governments in monitoring content has just taken a new turn, with Pakistan this week shutting down Facebook and a day later YouTube. In the case of China the reasons were political for closing Google and temporarily reducing Internet access in western areas when there were riots. Australia, which has sparked debate with its efforts to monitor through legislation covering a blacklist of unacceptable sites, argues that it is protecting children, a subject that causes somewhat less polemic.

And now Pakistan has widened the debate by removing access to huge Internet sites because of sites that participated in a “draw Mohammed day”, prompting the government to say it had to take action “in view of growing sacrilegious contents.”

Islam does not allow the Prophet Mohammed’s image to be depicted, a religious law that resulted in huge problems for a Danish cartoonist, his newspaper and Denmark, some years ago.

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