Get the latest news and updates from Dawn. Well-placed sources told Dawn on Wednesday that recently the telecommunications headquarters in the capital had issued a directive to all its regional directors and leading Internet service providers to ensure that access to the pornographic websites was blocked. Any violation of the subject issue is a serious offence under the law. List of porno sites is attached.
The list, obtained by Dawn, contains the universal resource locators β or, addresses of World Wide Web pages β of some well-known pornographic websites.
When contacted, the regional director of the PTA, Col Rizwan Haidery, argued that the telecoms regulator could actually block access to all pornographic websites available on the World Wide Web. Those not connected with the Pakistan Internet Exchange would be made to do that. When the PTA director was informed that some technical experts maintained that blocking of websites would lead to bottlenecks on the Internet, he said he was not aware of this.
When it was pointed out to the PTA director that the list put out by the telecoms regulator did not contain the addresses of millions of pornographic websites, he asked this reporter to give the PTA a list of such other websites.
This would naturally take up a lot of time. As it is, the speed of the Internet is very slow in the country. There is no point in making it even slower. He added that it was pointless seeking to put a ban on pornographic websites, for subscribers were intelligent enough to decide on their own whether they should see such sites or not.
