And now Pakistan is saying "We weren't really going to ban words." Yeah, right! And you didn't know where Osama Bin Laden was either.
Under heavy criticism for a telling cell phone carriers to ban certain words in text messages, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority went into damage control mode Wednesday. PTA spokesman Mohammed Younis Wednesday denied the existence of the plan, which has met with derision from mobile phone users in the country.
You see, here's the problem Pakistan. When you meet with telephone executives, type up a list of the words you want to ban and put them in a report. Well, it makes you seem silly when you later say you weren't really serious.
The Pakistan Government asmits it sent out a notice to mobile phone carriers -- but now says that it was giving the operators more time to come up with a shorter list. Earlier this week, three carriers -- Mobilink, Warid and Telenor -- received the notice, officials there confirmed. In it, the PTA , which regulates cell phone and internet carriers in Pakistan, called on them to implement the ban within seven days.
This would mean blocking text messages containing the offending words like
Drunk
Flatulance
K-Mart
Glazed Donut
Budweiser
Hole
Deeper
and my personal favorite - Crotch Monkey
Most of the 1,500 banned words were deemed sexually explicit or obscene by the PTA, the officials said.The words include "taxi" -- often used to refer to prostitutes in Pakistan -- "gay," "tongue," "homosexual," "intercourse," "condom" and fifty different uses of the f-word.
In the notice, which is available online, the PTA cited a law that bans the transmission of indecent and obscene messages.
But the latest about face on text messages appears to mean the PTA will not act on the notice -- at least, any time soon.
I don't know what a "Crotch Monkey" is, but from now on we should use it to describe anyone who tries to censor words.
