Blocking Youtube & Myspace
Apr 9th, 2008, in News, by PatungThe government and ISP’s blocking of video sharing and social sites, and the reasons behind it.
The government, through the Information ministry, has required Internet Service Providers to block the following websites, where the anti-Islam short film Fitna can be viewed:
- Youtube.com
- Myspace.com
- Liveleak.com
- Rapidshare.com
- Multiply.com
- Video.Google.com
- Themoviefitna.com
The minister Muhammad Nuh wrote to ISP’s last week asking them to block access to the sites on the grounds that Fitna could afp
“disturb religious and civil harmony at a global level.”
The parliament recently passed a law on internet blocking, although apparently it has not been signed by the president yet. jakartass
Muhammad Nuh met with a number of prominent Indonesian bloggers on 7th April such as Romi Satria Wahono and asked for advice, apparently it seems, on the best way to go about blocking the said sites.
One of the bloggers who attended the meeting, Avianto, blamed the government’s attitude on Indonesian low self-esteem and over-sensitivity:
Indonesian government told YouTube to take down a movie……YouTube didn’t respond because well, it’s YouTube, all of the content is user generated. But instead of following the spirit of the web by flagging the movie as negative or offensive, the government grumpily chose to block the entire YouTube. Yeah, I said grumpily because the government thought that YouTube didn’t respect Indonesian government request. So low self-esteem. So low that the government didn’t have guts to create a creative way to counter the movie on the content level. So low that instead of encouraging its own people to create a counter movie, the government chose to close down the infrastructure. It’s pathetic, really.
That action was also very New Orderly. In the New Order era, if the government did not like one article then the government would ban the newspaper that have the article. The history repeated itself. Welcome to the New Order 2.0.
One of the officials from the Information ministry complained that Indonesians were so often subject to racism and xenophobia in the international community. Avianto spoke up
As if Indonesian were not xenophobic and racist toward others? I always said this and people kept getting angry with my statement: “Indonesians are one of the most xenophobic and racist people in the world”. Do you think it’s not true?
Even worse, Indonesians are just not racist, Indonesian are tribalist.
Putting the blame to the international world for being xenophobic and racist against us was like a childish act. We are racist, we are xenophobic, we are tribalist.
Read the entirety of Avianto’s article: Commanding not Governing.
41 Comments on “Blocking Youtube & Myspace”
-
Muhammad Nuh is supposed to have apologised for blocking youtube, etc.
I openly ask the public’s forgiveness for the inconvenience caused over the past few days by the blocking of sites
This was a consequence of a process designed to protect the state.
Protecting the state?
And Google finally responded to the ministry’s initial complaint, and said:
We propose that the ministry send a list of videos believed to be illegal, noting the specific web addresses. We will promptly review the ministry’s list and remove any illegal [under indonesian law] videos from display to Indonesian YouTube users.
So Google will help the government block certain material to Indonesians, maybe similar to how they ‘cooperate’ with the Chinese government.
link – http://news.id.msn.com/regional/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1337236
-
Lairedion says:
This was a consequence of a process designed to protect the state.
Protecting the state?
Yeah, you can’t be careful enough. Indonesia was on the verge of being overrun by Wilderism, inspired by Fitna.
So Google will help the government block certain material to Indonesians, maybe similar to how they ‘cooperate’ with the Chinese government.
This is a worrying development. The “free internet” soon will be dominated by Micro$oft, who wants to make a hostile takeover of Yahoo and Google who is starting to show the characteristics of Micro$oft by giving in to governments opposed to free speech.
-
dewaratugedeanom says:
jawa.apostate
Or maybe they’re just trying to hide even more sex scandal videos of the most honored parliament??
And kill two birds with one stone? Don’t bring them to ideas.
We propose that the ministry send a list of videos believed to be illegal, noting the specific web addresses. We will promptly review the ministry’s list and remove any illegal [under indonesian law] videos from display to Indonesian YouTube users.
You see, it started already.
-
Definitely overkill and a desperate measure by a country which claims itself to be democratic. What happened to freedom of speech and expression which Indonesia has been trying so hard to improve in order dissociate herself from the Soeharto era? It seems like banning these sites just shows that Indonesia is still not ready to move on to total democracy yet. What a pity!
-
I heard a whisper last night (from a reliable but unattributable source) that given his now very tarnished reputation a certain newspaper/media group has taken an editorial line to not listen to IT’s own Mr. Rent-a-quote, Roy Suryo.
-
Is anyone outside Jakarta having problems accessing Blogspot blogs (such as mine) through Telkom? The Rev thinks it’s a national disgrace but I think it’s typical incompetence
-
@ Jakartass
I’m in Jakarta and using Telkom, but I haven’t been able to open Blogspot blogs so far. I can access MySpace and YouTube though.
-
On linknet blogspot sites can be accessed ok, linknet I notice were extremely quick to unblock youtube after the backflip. So, something good can be said about them after all.
Comment on “Blocking Youtube & Myspace”.
Copyright Indonesia Matters 2006-2023
Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Contact
Hurraay to the Indonesian Government!!!
Celebrating 100 years of… I don’t know, you name it…
The thing they did with the blocking is something wasteful, they spent too much on doing this. Funny how you can override the block by translating the website using Google Translator. Some CLEVER blocking eh?? I say it’s LAME. Even if they’er gonna do something stupid they should’ve done it brillianty – say use really powerful software that we can’t override (we’re just a bunch of kids without IT education)
Or maybe they’re just trying to hide even more sex scandal videos of the most honored parliament??