Internet Censorship in Indonesia

Indonesia's parliament has passed a bill criminalising those who access internet sites containing violent or pornographic material.

Anyone found guilty of the new offence could be jailed for up to three years, or have to pay a heavy fine.

The legislation allows the courts to accept electronic material as evidence in cases involving internet abuse.

It passed with wide majority support from all 10 factions in the chamber.

I think we all agree there's no way we can save this nation by spreading pornography, violence and ethnic hostility , said the Information Minister, Mohammad Nuh.

The intention is to start implementing restrictions on sites containing banned material next month, using special software.

Failure to provide clear definitions in a new law banning online pornography will hamper its enforcement, the government is being warned.

Legislator Abdullah Azwar Anas of the National Awakening Party (PKB) said the government must clearly define the terms "immorality" and "pornography" contained in the law on information and electronic transactions passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

The law criminalizes the use, transmission and provision of pornographic websites.

The law only briefly states providers and transmitters of information or pictures with immoral content could face a maximum sentence of six years in prison or a fine of up to Rp 1 billion (US$107,000).

Abdullah said although the terms immorality and pornography were still debated between feminist activists and conservatives, there needed to be an exact parameter upon which the two disputing groups could agree.

I think nudity certainly falls within the category of pornography, he said. The lawmaker said the government had a one-year period to draft regulations to enforce the law and publicize it before it is implemented.

National Commission for Child Protection chairman Seto Mulyadi said clear-cut definitions of immorality and pornography were important to avoid controversy over the new law.

I think pornography includes pictures or information that can arouse sexual desire. It doesn't necessarily mean nudity. In many cases, nudity can serve as an educational object, let's say for example in biology class, or as an artistic object.

Information and Communications Minister Muhammad Nuh told Reuters members of the public had asked the government to block sites with violent and pornographic content, out of concern about their negative impact as more Indonesians gain access to the Internet. Nuh's office has made available software to block websites with adult content. The software can be downloaded from the ministry's website.

It plans to begin blocking all adult sites from April 1.

Hackers took over an Indonesian government website for several hours to protest against a new law banning online pornography, the information ministry said.

The protesters posted a message on the ministry of information website challenging it to prove that the law was not drafted to cover the government's stupidity.

Indonesia's parliament have just passed a law against producing or accessing websites with pornographic or violent content.

The message seemed to be directed at the law that was just passed by parliament, said ministry official Ferdinandus Setu, adding the site was taken down for a period but was now back to normal.

The new law, which has still to be approved by the president, provides for a maximum penalty of six years in jail or a fine of up to 1 billion rupiah ($110,000) for disseminating pornographic material online.

The ministry said it would start distributing software Saturday to allow Internet users to block pornographic sites.

Sylvia Sumarlin, who chairs the Indonesian Internet Providers Association, warned that it would take time to block all pornographic sites. We have recommended that the government form a body to check websites and block unacceptable ones throughout the country. The government accepted our recommendation, but it will take time to implement it and in the meantime the ministry is recommending the use of the filtering software.

The Indonesian government has pledged to have all porn websites blocked in the country within the next two months as it works to implement the country's strict anti-pornography laws.

We should not wait for too long to close down these sites because otherwise more will people copy and disseminate this material, said Tifatul Sembiring, the Minister for Communication and Information Technology.

Tifatul noted that pornography was already prohibited by law, pointing to the 2008 Anti-Pornography Law, which was upheld recently by the country's Constitutional Court. That law declares, in part, that the state should protect its citizens from the dangers of pornography.

So if God is willing, we will fulfill our obligations, otherwise the continued presence of this material will violate our law, he said.

Tifatul explained that the government's move comes in response to a request from Islamic groups and the Indonesian Commission to Protect Children.

He says the government will shut down objectionable domestic sites and ask the country's 180 internet service providers to block international porn sites. A spokesman for the ministry told Canada's Globe and Mail that the government has not decided yet whether they will impose sanctions on ISPs that do not comply.

Update: Easier said then done

30th July 2010. Based on article from thejakartaglobe.com

The Communications and Information Technology Ministry says it can block access to up to 3,000 pornographic Web sites a day, as part of Minister Tifatul Sembiring's plan for smut-free Internet.

Ashwin Sasongko, the ministry's director general for telematics applications, said that his office had already installed filtering software called the Massive Trust Positive in all Internet-enabled computers supplied to villages under the government-sponsored Desa Pintar (Smart Village) program.

He acknowledged, however, that with an estimated four million new pornography pages added to the Internet each day, it would be impossible to completely block access to such sites for Indonesian Web users, and called on the public to participate by reporting offending sites.

But Internet service providers say they need the government to formalize its policy before they can take steps toward blocking the content.

Valens Riyadi, from the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII), told the Jakarta Globe that a regulation on the issue was necessary, to ensure that what we do [in terms of filtering sites] doesn't violate public's right to access information.

Ashwin, however, argued that ISPs were better-placed to identify offending sites, saying it should not be too difficult to filter pornographic content on the Internet and that the ministry would provide them with the list if officially requested.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Telecommunications Users Group said it supported the ministry's antipornography campaign, but questioned how effective it would be, given that many Indonesians access the Internet through their cellphones.

It's technically quite difficult to filter sites for a BlackBerry user, so we wonder if the government plans to rope [manufacturer] Research in Motion into doing the filtering, said Muhammad Jumadi, the group's secretary general.

Meanwhile, ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto told the Globe that the controversial bill on monitoring Internet content was currently being revised, after being widely panned by the public in February. The changes include a new title, Guidelines for Public Complaints on Unlawful Internet Content, signifying its change of focus to get increased public participation in the plan.

Reports from the public should be justifiable and will be reviewed by a monitoring team, whose proposed makeup we've also changed to include 60 percent public appointees and 40 percent government representatives, Gatot said, adding that the team's chairperson would be selected through a vote.

Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring, a member of the conservative Islamic party, called a news conference on the eve of Ramadan at which he renewed a promise to act against porn sites.

Quoting a poem, Sembiring called on Muslims to keep hearts clean in the holy month, and said that he would target websites and media that carried sexual content.

Already 200 Internet service providers in Indonesia have since last month agreed to block sites that displayed sexual activity and nudity, and their efforts are extraordinary, Sembiring said.

It's not an easy task as there are four million local and international porn sites, he said, but added that he was unable to say how many sites had been shut out of Indonesia.

I've promised before there will be efforts to close porn sites... This Ramadan hopefully traffic to porn sites can be reduced by more than 90%, he said.

Update: 800,000 websites blocked

13th August 2010. Based on article from thejakartapost.com

Telecommunication giant Telkomsel claims to have blocked 800,000 porn sites in response to the government's drive against pornography during Ramadan.

Telkomsel president director Sarwoto Atmosutarno said that the company had filtered the adult sites through its proxy server or gateway, which automatically denies its customers access to the porn sites.

Due to the blacklist internet access mechanism, users of Telkomsel's Internet facility will read in their mobile phone, computer or laptop monitors a warning, which reads: Access is denied due to security policy enforcement , if they try to open a porn site.

Based on article from thejakartaglobe.com

But the government's plan to block offensive sites on the Internet has come under fire from several Web sites, including two major news portals, which have suffered from access problems, presumably as a result of the blocking.

News portal Detik.com's advertisement section and Kompas.com were inaccessible, prompting Internet users and media experts to question the blocking policy. Detik.com founder and chairman Budiono Darsono expressed his outrage when the portal's subdomain was blocked.

Other Web sites that were blocked included Kompas.com, community forum Kaskus.us, and Google Adsense, a service that provides text-based advertising.

Ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto apologized for the blockage, saying that it was only the first day the plan was implemented: We apologize to some Web sites that were also blocked today, he said, adding that it should be understood that this is a big plan and it takes time to implement it perfectly.

Gatot said that the ministry would soon open a hotline which site users and owners could call to file reports on blockages. The ministry, he said, would verify the reported sites and take immediate action.

The Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring's new internet censorship strategy calls for rewarding citizens who report porn sites.

We will keep on blocking pornographic contents with various innovations, such as giving special rewards to members of the public who report porn sites to us, Sembiring said.

The anti-porn official did not say what rewards would be offered and didn't comment as to whether the campaign could backfire by having more people surf for porn in an effort to weed out what the country describes as offensive material.

The latest salvo launched against online porn asks the public to report the sites via a telephone hot-line.

Sembiring claimed that his ministry's efforts have successfully blocked 90% of porn sites. But reports say that most of the Ministry's previously targeted sites are still operating.

Indonesia's Communications and Information Ministry claims it has blocked nearly 1 million sites that carry pornographic content.

Communications and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring said the censorship of porn sites was in line with the government's commitment to provide safe sites accessed by Indonesians and build a more positive character for the nation.

We've blocked more than 983,000 porn sites. We will keep on doing it, Tifatul said during a seminar on the Healthy and Safe Use of the Internet. Tifatul added that the censorship would in turn improve people's ethics in using the Internet for positive purposes.

Indonesia's communications and information ministry has blocked more than one million pornographic Web sites ahead of Islamic holy month of Ramadan according to a newswire.

However, this does not mean that such sites will be allowed to operate during the rest of the year, Indonesia's miserable communication and information minister, Tifatul Sembiring said.

This measure is also in line Indonesia's electronic information and transaction law, and telecommunications law, which targets negative content --defined as porn, defamatory speech and malicious viruses--within the country, Sembiring noted.

He also called on the public's assistance to block the Internet's two billion porn sites, many of which can still be accessed despite the blockage.

Popular video sharing site Vimeo was blocked by Indonesia's largest telco Telkomsel for a short while. And while it was still being blocked, the only reasonable answer that the company's customer service and staff had was that Vimeo was somehow associated with the only thing that is being widely censored in Indonesia: porn.