Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) recently enforced a ban on thousands of pornographic websites. But who would have though that PTA also considers shoes websites offensive ?
All the websites which contains shoes keyword at the end of the URL, for example “aldoshoes.com”, “dcshoes.com”, “shoes.com”, “onlineshoes.com”, “dvsshoes.com”, “planetshoes.com”, “bornshoes.com”, “drschollsshoes.com” and thousands of other domains ending with shoes have been banned by PTA. On contacting the ISP Wateen Telecom it was made clear that shoe websites have indeed been banned by PTA, but they could not do anything about it, because PTA is the regulatory body and no ISP have authority over it.
This ban have affected many Businesses in Pakistan that work in shoe business and web developers can not access their own websites.
Internet is continuously been filtered severely in Pakistan, and this blunt ban on footwear websites shows the intolerance of just anything. Recently Pakistan interior minister issued a statement of banning the world’s most popular search engine Google in Pakistan, See Tribune Report.
Pakistan have banned Facebook and Youtube recently. There are also discussions of banning those websites indefinitely. Such actions reflects the increasing intolerance of religion, freedom of speech and SHOES ?