New York - In attempting to block access to its country's citizens over allegedly anti-Islamic videos on the site, Pakistan inadvertently cut off access to Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube to much of the world for several hours on Sunday, the Associated Press reported.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Agency ordered the country's seventy-plus Internet service providers to block YouTube, with a PTA official telling AP the ban was related to an upcoming film from Dutch lawmaker Geer Wilders that will reportedly portray Islam as "fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals."

The wider outage, which knocked out YouTube for hours in parts of Asia, was attributed to mistakes made by both the PTA and data carrier PCCW.

"We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again," a YouTube spokesperson told AP.

The move by Pakistan to censor YouTube from its citizens follows similar efforts undertaken in recent years by countries including China, Iran, Morocco, Myanmar and Thailand.

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