The Cellular companies are worried about streams of their cash-inflows in terms of their voice services as increased speed of data communication in the aftermath of 3G and 4G technology will enable customers to shift towards using communication tools through Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber and Skype more frequently.

All these services all over the world are free so it should be treated the same way. After getting data services with more speed, the customers will be able to make voice communication through WhatsApp, Viber and Skype as free of cost instead of making calls through common mobile phones. But the users will have to purchase smart phones or devices for using these services through their cell phones.

“This is not the issue confronting Pakistan only but all over the world the cellular operators are facing these kinds of problems so when it will be resolved internationally then solution will also come into our market,” a senior official of Ministry of Information Technology (IT) told The News here on Friday.

When this scribe contacted to Secretary Ministry of IT, Ikhalque Ahmed Tarar, he categorically stated that there was no plan to restrict these services in Pakistan. The government, he said, would ask the companies to find out solutions in consultation with other stakeholders.

When contacted, PTA high-ups replied, “We are advising the cellular operators to find a solution with the management of these services by sharing revenues with each other”.This scribe also contacted to one top official of a cellular company operating in Pakistan and he said that they knew the market dynamics so they would come up with viable plan to run 3G and 4G without any problem after the upcoming auction.

However, the sources in Ministry of IT told this scribe that the government was going to arrange special conference in coming May in Islamabad by inviting experts from Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of the world to discuss this issue in detail in Pakistan as the situation emerges in the aftermath of spectrum auction in the country.

The News

The bill might take one or two more months to be presented in Parliament and then passed and implemented. But that is a basic requirement to convince any international website to launch a localised version in the country.

The ministry only reached this point after it realised filtration of sacrilegious content is a very expensive and difficult process.

Although during the previous days the ministry claimed having found some way to block blasphemous content on YouTube, it may be able to open the website when it would be fully confident about the achievement.

But it does not seem possible at this point in time, so the ministry is considering certain other options. Without assuring that blasphemous content could not be seen on the social-networking, re-opening it would not be possible for the government, as it might incite protests and riots across the country.

On the other hand, for a localised version of YouTube, it is a pre-requisite that legislation is done to provide shelter to the website from bad or unwanted posts.

As per the proposed law, the website cannot be sued in case something immoral and illegal is shared on it. But in response the website will be bound to remove that material or content from its localised domain. However this bar will not be applicable to its international website.

As per an official of the ministry, the developers of YouTube were contacted and asked to remove sacrilegious material. It has been two months. They are taking the plea that content blocking would be against its policy. They float the idea about a localised version of YouTube though.

At present many countries have their local versions of YouTube. These include India, Turkey, Malaysia, Algeria, Jordon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen. YouTube has also proposed localised versions for Saudi Arabia and some other countries.

For Saudi Arabia blasphemous content has been blocked without blocking the website. Pakistan does not have enough resources to get a similar thing done.

For India blasphemous content was blocked by YouTube on local version. China does not have a localised version but a very powerful filter to block unwanted content.

The Nation

On September 17, 2012 Islamabad blocked access to the popular video-sharing website after it aired a trailer for a low-budget American film deemed offensive to Islam.

Pakistan summoned the most senior US diplomat in the country to protest against the “Innocence of Muslims”, demanding that the film be removed and action taken against its producers.

A year later, the film is barely mentioned but YouTube, whose parent company is US multinational Google Inc, is still banned in Pakistan, as it is in China and Iran.

Pakistan is no stranger to censorship. Foreign television programmes deemed offensive are blocked. Films shown at cinemas are stripped of scenes considered too daring.

But the YouTube ban is in name only.

Internet users like Abdullah Raheem, a university student in Pakistan’s cultural capital Lahore, can easily access the site through a simple proxy or Virtual Private Network (VPN).

“Most people who go to school or university know how to access YouTube, but not the rest of the population,” says Abdullah. Only 10 percent of Pakistan’s estimated 180 million people have access to the Internet, one of the lowest rates in the world.

“This ban has no impact,” says Abdullah, who still feels bad about logging onto YouTube. “As a Muslim, I’m ashamed… because the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ defiled Islam.”

Pakistan blocked the site only after Google was unable to block access to the film because it has no antenna in the country.

Although Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt defended hosting the film, the company did have the technology to block access to it in countries such as Egypt, India and Saudi Arabia.

But the Pakistani government didn’t stop there. It then ordered that websites be monitored for “anti-Islam content”.

The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which specialises in Internet censorship, says Pakistan has used Canadian company Netsweeper to filter websites relating to human rights, sensitive religious topics and independent media.

The researchers say that pornographic content and political websites from Balochistan, the southwestern province gripped by separatist insurgency, are among those blocked.

Shortly after Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf was arrested in April, Pakistan shut down access to a satirical song posted on YouTube’s rival Video that poked fun at the army.

But the song “Dhinak Dhinak” performed by the Beygairat Brigade, which is Urdu for Shameless Brigade, quickly went viral as Pakistani Internet users went through proxy VPNs to watch it.

“It is still creating waves. So I think they helped our popularity by banning that song,” said the Brigade’s lead singer Ali Aftab Saeed, 29.

Saeed believes that the authorities are bent on a wider campaign of Internet censorship, not just restricting access to items considered blasphemous in the nation.

“We thought that they would try to ban just the link to that particular video (‘Innocence of Muslims’) but they instead banned the whole website (YouTube) and then they extended it to satire and people who discuss the role of military groups. So yes, it is a worrying situation,” he told AFP.

Shahzad Ahmad, director of Internet rights campaign group, Bytes For All, also says that online censorship serves a wider political agenda than just shutting down blasphemous content.

“The government is trying to curtail, limit and curb citizen freedom of expression,” Ahmad told AFP.

He says citizens are waging a “cyberwar” against Pakistani institutions who are blocking and filtering the Internet.

“There is a very clear defiance from users, particularly from the youth on government filtering,” he told AFP.

Bytes For All has gone to court in Lahore, demanding an end to “illegal and illegitimate” censorship of the Internet.

The fight is vital to stop the government developing tools of censorship that threaten “the security and private live” of individuals, says Farieha Aziz, a member of the Bolo Bhi advocacy group that is closely following the case, which encompasses the YouTube ban. Software surveillance FinFisher, developed by British company Gamma and able to access content on personal computers, has been detected recently on Pakistani servers.

Although it is unclear whether it has been deployed by Pakistan’s own intelligence agencies or foreigners, the NSA scandal in the United States has heightened suspicions. In Pakistan, the cyberwar has only just begun.

Daily Times

The PTI severely injured peaceful media persons, including a cameraman, busy in covering their protest camp on The Mall in hot and humid weather. The proceedings were boycotted at a time when the opposition took up the matter of police torture on PTI workers and assembly members. The Speaker adjourned the proceedings immediately after the media boycotted the assembly proceedings with the objective of expressing solidarity with them.

PTI’s Dr Nosheen Hamid moved a privilege motion against the police for arresting and torturing her while she was protesting against the alleged rigging in PP-150 Lahore. She alleged that police had forcibly bundled her into their van and took her to the police station despite that she had repeatedly conveyed to them that she was an MPA.

The law minister, responding to her privilege motion, claimed that the PML-N government believed in the freedom of speech and it had fought against dictator when its members were not allowed even to raise voice in the assembly.

He claimed that he himself was a strong believer in the freedom of speech and assured the opposition members of his complete cooperation and urged the speaker for forwarding the privilege motion to the special committee and the provincial government would adopt immediate measures on the recommendations of that committee. He claimed that Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had already constituted a committee to look into the matter.After the media boycott, the speaker constituted a committee comprising minister Ch Shafique, Abdur Razzaq Dhillo, Murad Raas from the PTI and Dr Waseem from the JI.

Meanwhile, Press Gallery President Babar Dogar, Lahore Press Club President Arshad Ansari and other media persons lodged a strong protest against the PTI leadership and workers for manhandling peaceful journalists outside the assembly building.

Minister Ch Shafique took up the issue in the assembly and later, the law minister held a meeting with the media representatives and assured them of his complete cooperation. He also called DIG Operations Rai Tahir who reached the spot and assured the media of immediate action against the responsible besides registration of a case. He told the media representatives that they had arrested one accused and were trying to nab others as well.

Meanwhile, the media representatives filed an application with the Civil Lines Police Station against the PTI leaders, including PTI Punjab President Central Punjab President Ijaz Chaudhry, Opposition Leader in Punjab Assembly Mian Mahmood Rasheed, and workers for touring and injuring the media persons. Media representatives have decided to continue their protest even on Tuesday (today).

The News

I had been considering writing on this topic for a while, but I foolishly believed it to be ‘trivial’ or ‘unimportant’, or even ‘so incredibly stupid that my brain hurt to dwell on it for more than a moment’. But our elected leadership and our guardians of justice have managed to open my stubborn eyes. If they apparently believe it to be the most important stand they will ever take, how can I ignore it?

I commend the powers that be, from all branches of the government. Our detractors may insist that our government has all the efficacy of a wet paper bag at a pillow fight but we have proved them wrong. We have proved that when it matters, when we come down to it, when our future is on the line we do not infight, we do not waver. We are coming up to a year since we have patriotically held firm and held together in that most important of issues: YouTube.

This was a necessary step, of course, in showing western powers that we will not be bullied from without, that we will fight tooth and nail for our people. Yes, we kidnapped and detained people within our borders without due process at the behest of other governments. Yes, we allow drones to bombard civilian areas. Yes, we are constantly being dictated terms due to our coffers being so perennially depleted that we envy countries with a cash flow problem (because it implies that they, in fact, have a cash flow).

But one video among millions (available on many other websites) that can only offend someone if they search for it, view it and keep watching till the end? Now they have pushed us too far.

Showing our defiance, showing we are not ones to shy away from an international tussle, our newly appointed Minister for Information Anusha Rehman said we would unblock YouTube once every website, as in the entire internet, was free from objectionable content and presumably once the Sahara Desert was free from grains of sand. Neither criticism, nor mockery, nor our own staggering ignorance about the way the internet works has stopped our relentless defence.

Such is commitment, in the face of critics like Mina Muhibullah Kakakhel, who insist that students are suffering from missing the literally millions of educational and research oriented videos available on YouTube. If she truly cared about students, she would have realised long ago that no education is worth the risk that some evildoer will come into our schools, hold the children hostage, and force them to search for, open and watch the offending video.

We are a proud nation. We may negotiate with and harbour terrorists, we may have reduced our largest city to a nightmarish perpetual gangland through inaction, we may react to our annual floods with the foresight and reflexes of a man in a coma but by all that is holier than thou, we will not give in on this.

The Ostrich Defence is a time-honoured technique that we have perfected over time. Our ban of YouTube has not removed the videos because if we had the power to impose censorship worldwide I shudder (with delight of course!) to imagine what we’d do. But, like the magnificent ostrich (the most elegant and intelligent of all birds) we drive our heads into the sand with the comfortable knowledge that if we can’t see it, it can’t exist.

We occasionally couple this with our elegant Entitled Auntie Haggling Over Fish defence. Now, we claim with a straight face that would make the most consummate poker player blush, YouTube will suffer the loss of our custom. No more shall the completely free service profit from pious Pakistanis who never buy anything in their targeted ads. Like a shopkeeper who forgets his place, Google (YouTube’s parent company and almost certainly the 2030 owners of the world) will come back to the offended Auntie and grovel until she magnanimously restores them to her good graces.

And they certainly must. Without Pakistan, people will soon ask “Google who?” but will of course be unable to find the answer because no one remembers how to find things out without Google.

There is also a perfectly plausible security-based reason for this ban that can be understood via sufficient wringing of the brain (if it doesn’t hurt, you’re not wringing hard enough). By appeasing those who would have turned violent had YouTube not been banned – by definition, criminals and terrorists – we are embarking on a bold new strategy of pre-emptively surrendering, like a lifelong urban veteran wearily taking out his wallet at every traffic light whether anyone has asked him for it or not.

A more naïve leadership may have considered defending liberties and freedom to information, while punishing violent criminals. But so sagacious have we become that we have skipped over the formalities of attempting to control the situation, pretending the writ of the state can overrule rabble rousers, fighting, losing and negotiating. Indeed, we have skipped all that unnecessary hassle and moved straight to wringing our hands and asking whether aforementioned violent criminals would like some tea while they think of the next ridiculous demand, and the one after that, forever.

A point that has been brought up by weak-willed and unpatriotic Pakistanis is that we should be more thick-skinned, and ignore pathetic attempts at crude mockery by small and hateful people. The very idea! If our eyes offend us, we will cast them out. YouTube is a good start – but only a start.

We will ban every other video service that hosts a video uploaded by anyone, anywhere, that offends any Pakistani. We will ban search engines that return blasphemous insults if you search ‘blasphemous insults’. We will ban pens if a pen anywhere has been used to write offensive things because what other choice do we have? To not seek out, acquire and consume these rage-inducing pieces of media that literally anyone anywhere can create at any time? Ridiculous.

We must show we are ready to go back to the Stone Age, and even that only if those cave paintings are pre-approved. If not, back to living in trees, all the better to have a moral high ground while we become a frightening but fascinating spectacle for National Geographic.

We must show we are prepared to riot and murder a score of our own people (that’ll show those filthy westerners) every time an acne-riddled teenager anywhere decides he wants attention. Surely, allowing under-20 trolls the world over a chance to shut down our entire society every time they feel like it cannot possibly backfire.

So next time you feel depressed at the sheer scope of our unaddressed problems, next time you wonder what our government and judiciary – elected and supported by the mandate of the people in a heady rush of democracy – plan to do about extremism, power shortages, natural disasters and education, take heart: at least we’ve banned YouTube.

Zaair Hussain…The writer is a freelance contributor. Email: zaairhussain@gmail.com

The News