Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Indonesia Internet Cencorship (continue)


Following the Ministry Instruction (the last post), YouTube had been blocked nationwide by local ISPs.

JakartaPost has the news : link

Reporter without borders : link

Several other big sites are also reported being blocked :
Multiply.com
MySpace.com
Liveleak.com
Rapidshare.com
elance.com (by telkom speedy)

Ministry of Communication and Information yesterday had a discussion with IT and blogger community, but resulted nothing. No surprise, since the government is not really into public aspirations.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

UU ITE (Information and Electronic Transaction Law) = Law to allow information censorship by Indonesian Government


Indonesian government has produce a law that govern information and 'electronic transaction'. It called 'UU ITE' Undang Undang Informasi & Transaksi Elektronik. The law aimed to prevent cyber crime such as carding which is quite popular in Indonesia.
The draft of the law can be viewed here

However, a lot of people see it as a law and base for the government to do internet censorship.

This week (week of 8 April 2008), it's widely known that a popular site YouTube has been instructed by Ministry of Communication and Information to be blocked nation wide. This instruction has to be complied by all ISP.

The reason for YouTube blocking is because there a video called Fitna made by a Dutch politician that has been touted as a misleading critique of Islam.

As of today, the whole Indonesia that use local ISP can not access YouTube. Some ISP go even further by blocking a few other site including multiply.com

Below is the Ministry's letter to ISP :

photo credit : KOMPAS/RENE L PATTIRADJAWANE link

A loosely translation of the content :

"In relation of the video called Fitna (made by Dutch politician, Geert Wilders' that circulate via internet media, and can cause inter religious disharmony globally.

Because of that, we instructed you to coordinate with APJII (Indonesia ISP Assosiation) members and IIX (Indonesia Internet Exchange) authorities with all effort to block the site and blog that post that video.

This was told to be done obidiently.

Ministry of Communication and Information
Muhammad Nuh

cc : Indonesia Police Chief.
"

News in Jakarta Post regarding Fitna link