James Delahunty
17 Jun 2010 11:05
Indonesian communications minister Tifatul Sembiring, chief of the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party, is calling for an Internet blacklist to be enforced in the country to "save the young." Sembiring highlights the recent shockwaves through Indonesia caused by the distribution of homemade sex videos involving three popular celebrities in the country.
Sembiring has vowed to draft a new decree with lawmakers after an earlier proposal of a blacklist was shelved due to opposition. "The porn video 'allegedly' consisting of three artists ... has insulted the nation's constitution and Pancasila," he said, referring to the founding national philosophy that enshrines belief in the "one and only God."
"Our teachings have been tainted by the release of these videos," he added. The minister cited a survey conducted in 2007 which claimed 97 percent of Indonesian high school students had watched pornographic content online.
Now Sembiring wants a special task force to maintain a blacklist for the electronic filtering of the web of offensive material. "There will be a team to observe whether a website contains points from the blacklist. The team will assess whether such websites truly contain pornographic material," Sembiring said. "If it does, we'll ask the website to delete the points included in the list, but we won't ban the whole website."
Sembiring apparently also implied a link between HIV/AIDS and Internet pornography, before questioning whether the $19.6 million the country spends fighting the deadly illness could be "better spent" elsewhere.