Pornography is Not about BlackBerry

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - The Minister of Communications and Technology Information Tifatul Sembiring again comes out as a trending topic on micro-blogging Twitter due to his tweets on demanding Research in Motion (RIM), the Blackberry producing Company.

Tifatul on his twitter account said seven points are needed to be fulfilled by the RIM company and it seemed to be without focus and fabricated. However, the Minister said he acted on the basis of the existing regulations.

In his account, Tifatul asked the Canadian company to respect and obey the regulations in Indonesia in relation to the information and electronic transaction laws (UU ITE no. 36/1999 and no.44.2008) and pornography law (UU no. 44/2008). Next he asked RIM to set up a server in Indonesia due to the many smartphone users of more than 2 million in Indonesia. Tifatul also urged the service provider to have a service center here to ease the users whenever the gadget broke, he added in his tweet.

Aside from the three first points for Tifatul, the other four points asked the company to recruit and employ Indonesian manpower with a representative office here and to have a local content software about Indonesia. Those demands were aimed to show the nationalism spirit as Indonesian people although using technology device from other countries.

The most controversial points that the minister wrote were about asking the company to apply software to block any porn site access for the users and repeater to make the government easier to investigate any crime including corruption.

Not few twitter users (tweeps) responded and said that some of the demands were not clear. Pornography and nationalism were two main factors which couldn’t be measured by a gadget and most of them had actually been fulfilled, Ventura Elisawati, an observer on telecommunications and information technology, said here on Sunday evening.

"He might not even know about what to be proposed. The points he offered to RIM have been done by the service providers. And from the main context he raised, from pornography to nationalism, it was ridiculous," the woman called Ve said.

She added that the ultimatum from the minister to block the Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) was not a win-win solution and unfair. Porn sites could not only be accessed through BIS and it was the users’ prudence in accessing the site, she explained.

"If the problem is pornography, it’s not RIM to be blamed. Blackberry is just a tool. And pornography is not about the gadget, it all depends on the people’s mind and morality," she said. On the one side, Ve said that RIM was the wrong target for the ministry.

"The minister aimed the wrong target if he wanted RIM to block porn sites to all Blackberry access. It’s not the capacity of RIM; it’s the providers’ duty. RIM had offered all the services to the providers who invited the company bringing Blackberry to market here," she said.

On the other side, the company also did not give a quick response to the problems related to Blackberry in Indonesia since two years ago, she said. In 2009, Tifatul had asked RIM to set up a server in Indonesia but it had been realized in October last year. Guntur Siboro, the marketing manager of Aora TV, said that the demands proposed by the minister were unclear and unfocused.

"It’s just fabricating and out of the main context. Blocking internet service of a provider is not like a piece of cake," he said.

Blocking an internet service couldn’t be done to a certain service provider only, he said.There were three ways of internet service blocking, from the operator, the device and the users, he said.

Blocking the porn site from the operator and device couldn’t be applied to all users. Such blocking was worked sorting certain words related to pornography, such as girl, sex, porn, etc.

"But not few people need information related to those words, so pornography is not the technology’s mistake," the observer said.

In relation to the local content of Indonesia, the former marketing manager of Indosat said that not only Blackberry which was given the policy, all social networks should be applied also, like Facebook and Twitter.

"So, in my opinion blocking the user is the most effective way if the government wants to fight for pornography. The user should be educated to make use of internet as wise as possible," he said.

If the government wanted to hunk the porn sites entering the country, it should not be half way. The government might block all the internet services, so it’s better for the country to be free from Internet services, but only if the government dared to do it, he said.