Porn Access to be Denied -- Indonesia...

Being one of your country's worst performing cabinet ministers in a cabinet that has supposedly been selected based on its professionalism and professional experience in the real world must be a kick in the teeth for a proud man. This is especially so when you get a fairly public rebuke from the president and his advisers. So, how does one turn it around in the world's most populous Muslim nation, play the porn card.

In a country that is in the grips of celebrity sex tape euphoria that is keeping the presses and gossip show running hot, it is little surprise that the Minister for Communication and Information, Tifatul Sembiring, has decided to publicly announce that Indonesia will be in essence porn site free within two months. Yes, purveyors and lovers of porn, your producing and viewing days are numbered now that the Minister has set the date.

The plan is to use a filter that blocks all international porn sites at the ISP level. In essence, there is a blacklist that ISPs are to maintain and use in order to filter out objectionable content. It is not entirely clear that Indonesia or the ISPs themselves have the technology in place to effectively enforce the ban, but time will tell. The plan for local porn content is to shut it down permanently.

A major concern is what constitutes pornography and how do sites end up on the blacklist, particularly the subjective nature of the listers could ensure that there might not be any, or sufficient, consideration given to whether the sites have educational value or otherwise. The decision will simply be based on whether the rude bits are showing or being spoken of, if they are then you are on the list.

The reality is that internet users are quite often as savvy, if not more savvy, than those tasked with enforcing the ban. For example, many sites will just migrate to different sites or use revolving addresses that make it difficult to consistently block them. Then, I am no expert, but there will surely be proxy servers and other mechanisms in place that allow for the filters to be bypassed.

I am not advocating pornography or access to it. However, to each their own. I am for putting in place mechanisms and technology that allows us to protect our children as much as possible. In most places these already exist in the form of parental controls and locks on computer systems. Yet, I am tech savvy enough to realise that when the time comes my son will probably be much more tech savvy than I, and consequently will be able to circumvent any controls his mum or I might try and put into place. Yet, we will still try.

The point I am trying to make here is that it is not a perfect world and laws to ban pornography across the board do not and will not work. The idea of banning all pornographic websites is also likely to be ineffective in the long term.

Truth be told, Tifatul Sembiring is a poorly performing Minister and he is seeking to deflect attention from his numerous and consistent failures by playing the porn card. I would say this is a high risk play on his part because he is unlikely to be the man who convinces Indonesians that porn is bad, porn is evil, and porn is against the law. He is likely to perform poorly on this one as well.