Teh Fluffy Kittez - 1 Forces Of Authoritarian Darkness - 0

These are dark days for those who love the Enlightenment. If you, like me, consider that objectivity, empiricism, individual freedom and scepticism towards superstition and the emotive justification of power have created a much better world than that which went before, it is disheartening to see so much credence and trust being ceded to those who feel otherwise.

Now and again, there is a spark of joy. I felt just such a spark when reading the definitive account of what happened when the Pakistani government managed to disconnect YouTube from the Web last Sunday. Take a moment to click on that link, and if you've got the bandwidth download the high resolution MP4 that's mentioned. This shows graphically how the attack happened, and how quickly and firmly it was put right.

There are some solid lessons here. I don't believe the official reason given by the Pakistani authorities for banning YouTube - that it contained material offensive to Islam. Like the Motoons, Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and the War of Jenkins' Ear, the balance of probabilities suggests opportunistic amplification of otherwise insignificant events by people with other agendas.

YouTube has many, many offensive things on it - and the item that was the cause célèbre in this case was most certainly offensive. It's often unclear who puts them up and why, but they get taken down. YouTube is not and has never claimed to be a model of journalistic freedom and fearless protector of abstract rights. That's not its job. You'll find that places which do have pretensions in that direction, like Wikipedia, have a different stance.

In this case, I'm prepared to believe that YouTube had material critical of the Pakistani authorities, which is what they really wanted to get shot of, but it's harder to justify removing such things if you're being democratic.

So, we have an instinctively authoritarian regime ostensibly supporting democracy but trying to game the Internet's internal mechanisms for its own ends. Happens. The mechanism chosen, however, leaks the censorship out into the cloud, which promptly starts replicating it around the world. Within a couple of hours, this is spotted and the remedy applied: some bright sparks at YouTube correctly diagnose the problem, start fixing it and also alert their counterparts elsewhere on the Net.

The fix is entirely benign. At no point is Pakistan disconnected or counter-attacked (ironically, anecdotal evidence suggests that it did have problems purely through making itself the destination for global YouTube requests, which it was unable to handle): the single cause of the problem is neatly removed and the damage undone.

No diplomats are alerted, people with guns deployed, tanks rolled onto lawns or sabres rattled. No official complaint is raised, no carefully nuanced political stance taken up, no cultural exchanges cancelled, no embassy officials expelled or boycotts urged.

Within hours, YouTube is re-established and its primary purpose - the dissemination of videos depicting kittens falling off sofas - asserted in the face of some of the ugliest geopolitics going. And by who? By people with alternative haircuts, obscure mathematical in-jokes on their T-shirts and lossless Aphex Twin on their iPods.

These people are the true heirs to Hume, Locke and Rousseau, BGP rules are their trusty shields and fluffy kittens their burning swords of freedom.

Good.