Pressures and Attacks against Independent Content Providers: Pakistan

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the licensing authority for electronic services, has imposed a number of restrictions of the use of the Internet. Licenses to ISPs (Internet Service Provider) will be issued under the terms of the highly restrictive Telephone and Telegraph Act of 1885.

Under the terms of the agreement, users are prohibited from using any sort of data encryption and have to agree that their electronic communications may be monitored by government agencies. Transmission or reception of obscene or objectionable material is also prohibited and may lead not only to immediate disconnection of service but also to prosecution by authorities.

Users of electronic services will also have to submit to service provider's copies of the National Identity Card. According to the terms of issuance of licenses, service providers will also be responsible for ensuring that the programs and information provided through electronic services do not "come into direct clash with accepted standards of morality and social values in Pakistan."

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Telephone

The telephone was not invented by Alexander Graham Bell, as is widely held to be true, but by Philipp Reiss, a German teacher. When he demonstrated his invention to important German professors in 1861, it was not enthusiastically greeted. Because of this dismissal, no financial support for further development was provided to him.

And here Bell comes in: In 1876 he successfully filed a patent for the telephone. Soon afterwards he established the first telephone company.

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