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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT) released the third version of the social media rules, titled ‘Removal of Unlawful Online Content Rules 2021’, earlier this month. The country’s internet companies have raised concerns over the third version of the government’s amended social media rules. Internet companies have protested that the most problematic provisions in the earlier versions remain unchanged in the latest draft. In totality, the latest draft is believed to be regressed in comparison to the previous versions.
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Pakistan’s Internet Companies Sent Repeated Feedback from Industry
Asia Internet Coalition’s (AIC) Managing Director Jeff Paine has stated that AIC and its member companies are disappointed with the proposed revisions. He further added that Pakistan’s MoITT received repeated feedback from the industry over several months, despite which the draft rules still include a number of problematic provisions.
He mentioned that provisions such as data localisation and local presence requirements undermine Pakistan’s digital growth and transformation agenda. However, AIC has submitted comments to the MoITT on the amended draft, and the ministry still has a chance to fix all the areas of concern. AIC expressed disappointment over the consultation process and said that the latest draft being replicated from the older draft with only minimal changes shows that the consultation process was not undertaken to produce substantive changes.
