They caved when Pakistan pulled this on them. They caved when someone objected to Nick Gisburne’s exercise in Koran quotation. They caved when one of our own anti-jihadi Vents was alleged, without explanation, to contain “inappropriate content.” They’ll cave this time too, although for the moment they’re playing it cool:

The government of the world’s most populous Islamic state says YouTube has two days to take down a Dutch lawmaker’s provocative film on the Koran or it will block access to the popular video-sharing Web site…

In response to queries, a YouTube spokesperson said the site allows people “to express themselves and to communicate with a global audience.” [See the above links. — ed.]

“The diversity of the world in which we live — spanning the vast dimensions of ethnicity, religion, nationality, language, political opinion, gender, and sexual orientation, to name a few — means that some of the beliefs and views of some individuals may offend others,” she said.

Videos that breach YouTube guidelines are removed, and some graphic material is restricted if not suitable for all audiences, the spokesperson added.

CNS says it’s a two-day ultimatum but Reuters says the ban is already in effect. Question for our techie readers, assuming this isn’t over even their heads: How hard would it be to filter individual videos like “Fitna” if you wanted to block them inside, say, a company? It would be as simple, I’m assuming, as imposing some sort of keyword block, but is there any way to limit that block to a single site or would you necessarily have to block that keyword for the entire Internet? My point is simply to discern how much of this is rank intimidation by Indonesia to get YouTube to pull the clip globally versus how much is a simple fascist inclination to “protect” its own people from the horrors of this particular video via targeted filtering software.

Elsewhere in “Fitna” news, jihadis are using it to justify violence ex post facto and women bulled into wearing burqas are burning Dutch flags. Business as usual, in other words.