Of Damn Pakis and Deregulation

300 seconds to load, and when they finally do load, they read, "Hello I am Aslam from Faislabad. I am a computer genius and I want to be a model. Here is my picture. Any hot girl wanna talk to me, email me at cool_guy786@xyz.com" If the person is highly dedicated to and serious about their profession, you’ll see a "My Resume" link above or below those lines. When these young men surf around, find out about and try their luck at the concepts of online sales and affiliate programs, they fail miserably, because they don’t know what skills and qualities they need to have to even consider starting an e-business, and they are not prepared to spend time and find out. Almost all of them resort to cheating.

Internet traffic from Pakistan has always been extremely unproductive. This went hand in hand with the never-ending credit card and website-stats frauds by Pakistani webmasters to convince all serious affiliate programs and business services to disallow webmasters in and operating from Pakistan. This was the start of the misfortunes that I had to deal with just because I belong to Pakistan, but certainly not the end. I did continue, and so did the popularization of Internet in Pakistan, adding more and more to my miseries and closing more and more doors of opportunity for me, until the day came when I realized I will have to analyze the feasibility of e-businesses I was in all over again. It did not take me long to realize, that when the layman is getting all his information and entertainment requirements for free without making much effort, and there is nothing I could sell or promote which people can not find for free, when people like me are not left with a lot of ways to earn money on the Internet, one niche in the e-market is to exploit this very situation, to sell information on "How to earn money on the Internet."

After months of detailed analysis and information gathering, I developed some info-products that I expected to sell like hot cakes. Servers were bought, advertising campaigns were designed, programmers were hired for development and online payment processing was set up. One fine evening, I noticed that my server would not respond to an FTP connection attempt. I tried again later. Then the next morning I emailed the customer support. They were sure there is nothing wrong. An exchange of information revealed that according to their experience, this problem occurs when my ISP is using a firewall. I called my ISP up, and as expected, their customer support did not have the slightest clue of what I was talking about. It took a week or so for me to realize and a couple of them more to digest that what I have gone through was due to the popular censorship on the Internet. Being a citizen of an Islamic Republic cost me a few thousand dollars.

My career in New Media has ended in a disaster, and I do not have a social right to complain. Speaking against censorship will mean speaking for pornography and against the Islamization of Pakistan. The Minister believes it is his religious duty to implement this censorship, especially when it does not cost him and his ministry a lot. That is what is important. Well-being of the citizens is not a factor to be considered in Islamization. I have to make the decision every serious IT professional in Pakistan has to make. I can either leave New Media as a profession and look for a cheap job in a software house, or leave Pakistan and live like a proper professional. I plan to choose the second option, because, according to my partner from India, "You can not do e-business in a country where the Internet is all about surfers looking for porn and the government trying to make it hard for them."

I believe it’s time we look for the answers to some basic questions. Is the Pakistani public not yet mature and responsible enough to be introduced to a deregulated source of Information? If it is, then how can a censorship be justified? If it is not, what is the pride in bringing X-hundred cities online? Pornography on the Internet is not a new phenomenon. It has been a part of Internet since its very beginning. Has the popularization of Internet among the illiterate masses not been the popularization of pornography? If the level of competence of the authorities is to be judged by the teachnically pathetic way in which the censorship has been implemented, then the very thought of allowing these incompetent authorities control our access to Information is horrifying, and is more than enough for people like me to decide to leave Pakistan and be a part of the notorious brain drain.