400 more indecent websites see ban
KARACHI- Discarding piecemeal approach to blocking websites that contain indecent material, the Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited (PTCL) on April 01, 2003 took a wholesale step by banning 400 more websites bringing the total websites blocked so far to 510.
The PTCL first started banning indecent websites in February this year by blocking 104 sites. Later in March it banned six more making the total 110.
“We have now banned 400 more porno websites and fed their IP addresses into the company’s channel through which it receives data and forward it to internet service providers (ISPs),” a top official in the PTCL told sources on April 01, 2003.
He said the company took the step after discussing the matter with the ISPs and other stakeholders of the business. “It is not yet decided when and how many more such websites would be banned in future,” he added.
The federal minister for IT and telecommunications ordered last month to block the websites showing vulgar and indecent material. But since then, the ministry officials and ISPs have been casting doubt on the productiveness of such an order. They say the order should be followed to uphold and protect social values but it could slow down the web browsing speed.
ISPs warn the order would do severe harm to their business by slowing down the internet browsing speed which they say is already not so up to the mark. “There is no doubt internet provides browsers and particularly teenagers an easy access to the whole world and the worst to the vulgarity through porno sites but the fact is that blockade of such sites, would severely damage internet speed,” V A Abidi, General Secretary Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (ISPAK) said.
He said the PTCL will have to feed millions of such sites’ IP addresses into its channel to execute the order. “Whenever the browser would enter any address, the ISP would first match it with the restricted ones and if it did not find it among them then it would execute the address to fetch the desired address for the browser,” he added.
Sindh IT Board (SITB) suggests various cyber-security measures to cope with this situation and protect information data, and filtration of different types of content.
“The need of the hour around the world is to implement various cyber-security measures that not only protect information and data, but also filter different types of content”, said Director Sindh Information Technology Board.
“The ideal case would be the creation and deployment of a national internet control switch, which accommodates the above needs. However, due to the maintenance overhead costs of implementing such a switch, it may be more feasible to address each of the goals on a priority basis with consideration to affordability and need”, he said.
Any monitoring and filtering mechanism must not affect the national internet bandwidth availability and have none-too-minimal impact on performance, he observed.
Source: The News
Date:4/2/2003
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