Indonesian government bans pornographic sites

August 11, 2010 The Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has announced that the government will be banning pornographic sites in the country. The announcement comes before the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. The ministry conducted a technical test of the banning program with the six largest internet service providers in Indonesia &mdash;, , , , Bakrie Telecom, and. The ministry is optimistic that their ban will make 80% of pornographic sites inaccessable in the Southeast Asian country.

The People's Republic of China runs a similar program that blocks pornographic websites.

Communications minister Tifatul Sembiring said that about 200 ISPs in Indonesia had agreed to block the websites. Sembiring also said that ISPs would not suffer any losses by blocking pornographic websites.

He also added that the ministry would adopt the same approach used by, which involves constantly monitoring offensive content which, when discovered, is immediately removed.