JAKARTA—Indonesia has been on an anti-internet porn kick for years now, but somehow the number of sites it blocks always seems to grow at the same pace as the number of citizens who complain about the sites. How that works is anyone's guess, but the country's indefatigable communications and information minister, Tifatul Sembiring, who never tires of complaining about porn, now has another idea. Get Google and YouTube to help block the stuff. Brilliant, Smithers!
Techinasia.com reports "ministry representative Azhar Hasyim as saying that they have talked with YouTube, but not yet with parent company Google."
However, the same article also states, "The government plans to get the web giant to cooperate regarding porn-related keyword searches. The minister also said that the government has blocked around one million porn websites up until now, with around 100 extra sites blocked every day. Azhar then claimed there are now no more Indonesian domain-based porn websites."
Doh!
But that's not all. "Interestingly, the collaboration plan isn’t the only intriguing claim that the Indonesian ministry made," reported the site. "The Jakarta Post cites the ministry as saying that there are '100 million' public complaints about internet pornography. The same ministry said that Indonesia only has around 40 million internet users a few weeks ago via Okezone. So if the claim is true, does that mean that every internet user in Indonesia has filed around two to three porn related complaints? Does that make sense somehow?"
Uh... no.
Techinasia.com doesn't think Google will play along with the persistent Sembiring, reasoning, "Looking at its previous saga with the Chinese government regarding keyword censorship, the possibility is small."
