Since the 1970s, America has consistently been charged with the seduction of local individualities, albeit principally with light entertainment.
Resistance is not unknown. In 1994, the French insisted that their radio stations play at least 40% French music, a decree described by one French DJ as like making artists paint 40% of their work in blue. He was right. The law had to be adapted because there wasn't enough blue to fill the quota.
For sure, TV and music have played their part in making the world a samer place. But they have also done a better job than governments at creating common ground between people. Enter the internet: its reach, immediacy and influence very much greater than any forerunner - surely a powerful unifier.
But, culturally, its rules are coastal American Democrat: laissez-faire, freedom of speech, importance of the individual - a problem for societies with different foundations, especially when their youth are drawn to such values.
Since 1995, China has introduced more than 60 batches of internet regulation, enforced by an online police force said to be 30,000-strong. It has spent $800m on the Great Firewall of China designed to jam foreign IP addresses.
Last month's blundering effort by Pakistan to block YouTube is further evidence that internet globalisation is not all loving hands across the oceans.
Indeed, at a tense time of fashioning a modus vivendi between cultures, a worldwide platform for Dutch politician Geert Wilders' assault on Islam is comfortable only for the most extreme free-speech zealot.
So should internet companies censor, confounding the freedom of speech so cherished by the majority of their users? Or should they press on, flaunting an American cultural norm in the face of sincerely held but incompatible local beliefs?
The internet has played as big a part as the airlines in creating the global village we live in. But in any village, one approach that seeks to dominate will provoke defiance. Whether it was noble, futile or both, we should not expect Pakistan's resistance to be the last of its kind.
- Richard Eyre is a media pluralist, richard.eyre@haymarket.com
A view from Richard Eyre
Dominance and defiance in the global village
The BBC World Service began talking sense into all nations in 1932, perhaps the earliest example of cultural imperialism: the export of one country's norms through the media.