After hue and cry of bloggers, social activists and hackers against porn sites PTA has finally taken steps to ban sites promoting obscene and explicit stuff in any form of graphics, images, illustrations or text. According to the officials PTA has already sent a list of 150,000 websites to ISPs, mobile phone service providers and international bandwidth providers to bring this ban into practice. However, ISPs and the other mentioned service providers have shown reluctance to help PTA in this regard, as it may enforce a lot of unwanted-load on the service providers in the form of excessive filtration.
After taking this really solid step, PTA has made one another strong decision of imposing SMS filtration to ensure the safety of the subscribers. The words to be abolished are both Urdu and English Origin. According to the list complied by PTA, English list contains over 1000 words whereas the list of Urdu has some 550 words. I must say if this is implied in its true sense it can help in raising the social and moral standards of our society that is day by day coming towards its downfall. When every institution plays its role sensibly, only then can a society achieve highest degree of standards in the required fields. Earlier
PTA banned bulk marketing messages,unsolicited calls and messages. However, PTA should accept that neither the imposed bans work, nor the ever-evolving laws and regulations formed by PTA are ever followed. May be they are too impractical to be followed? Probably PTA responds to all orders and pressures from government , and social activists" firmly" with no homework or planning. If we look few months back, we will find out that Rehman Malik ordered PTA to block unregistered SIMs overnight. Though PTA welcomed the orders (as it had no other option) mobile operators
protested against this impractical decision due to several reasons.
There are still a number of unregistered & unverified SIMs working in Pakistan. Still mobile users are getting bulk and spam messages daily in their inboxes.
It is also a surprise for us to know that PTA has got its hands on filtering devices which could filter thousands of bulk SMS' content released the every other hour. Few years back, a ban was imposed on anti-government sms messages including a special ban on sms containing disgracing and degrading words for Mr.President and Prime Minister. We all are well aware of the fact that PTA could not come up with any device or way to control such messages.
At the end, I am of the opinion that if PTA is really determined to place a ban on these over 1,500 words from being broadcasted via text messaging then PTA has a golden chance to collect applaud and appreciation from the mature and educated sector of the society. However, I do wonder that why on earth has PTA thought of banning words like deposit, lotion, kill, killer, taxi, tongue, fairy etc? I also oppose ban on religious terms including JESUS CHRIST. Also ban placed on medical terms may be a big hurdle for medical students. SMS being the most cheapest way of communication, helps all the student in their discussions with each other. However the words that are purely abusive and dirty are good to be banned.
I wish and hope that PTA may really brings good with this step, otherwise PTA has really added to the "Treasure of Mughalizat" as
expressed by Faisal Sabzwari on twitter. Moreover,
if PTA is really concerned about society upto this extent then why PTA hasn't formed any legislation to stop the vulgarity being promoted due to the circulation of their own-complied lists of banned words at blogs, personal pages and at social networking websites?
P.S: Banning explicit SMS content isn't something new in the history of world telecommunications. China revealed a similar
blacklist this year.
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