28 September 2010

Indonesian Porn Reporters -- Rewarded

There is nothing quite like getting the public involved in your own personal porn crusade. The Minister for Communication and Information, Tifatul Sembiring (aka TitS), has decided that the best way of ratcheting up his porn eradication scheme is to enlist the public and to reward them for their participation as social media experts.

The scheme seems simple enough; the public report to the Ministry any porn site that they know of and receive a reward from the Ministry. Any prospective reward hunters can contact the Ministry of (+62 21) 3899-7800 or at aduankonten@depkominfo.go.id. But you can only call between 09.00 and 14.00.

Nah, this is where it gets a little problematic by my reckoning. The Ministry has not exactly said how it plans to reward the porn finders, specifically it has not said whether this is a cash-based incentive scheme or perhaps something a little more sinister, like jail time.

When it is all said and done, how do you report a pornographic internet site if you have not had a sneak peak to check out whether the content is actually pornographic or not. I can see a lot of emails starting off "Well, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine told me about www.xxx. blah, blah, blah dot com."

I am not in Indonesia, so I cannot rightly say, but according to TitS, but Indonesia has supposedly blocked 90% of the internet pornographic sites that were once available to Indonesians. Nevertheless, I am sure some of my Indonesian based commenters might be able to enlighten us on the true state of play. But, to be honest, if 90% of internet porn sights are already cactus with respect to access from Indonesia, then the reporting role of the public really is nothing more than tidying up a few loose ends to get it up to 100%.

Personally, I think TitS is kidding himself on the block rates, but hey to each their own.

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