Slashdot Mirror
In Advance of Ramadan, Indonesian Gov't Starts Massive Censorship Push
An anonymous reader writes "The Indonesian government has blocked access to 1 million pornographic websites in advance of Ramadan, the country's holy month. Internet censorship is nothing new in Indonesia, but the scale of this particular restriction is unprecedented. Apparently this is only the beginning. Minister Tifatul Sembiring said Wednesday his office would target more sites through the country's holy month, and beyond."
Because Islam is the state religion.
Okay, possibly I'm stupid or out of touch, but I've been around the interwebs for a while and seen my share of stuff. It just doesn't seem likely that there are a million porn sites. I wouldn't have guessed 1 million in the world, and certainly not 1 million that the Indonesian government can block.
Here's an article in Forbes article that says
That's a far cry from 1 million. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much-of-the-internet-is-actually-for-porn/)
Maybe they mean 1 million pages. Or maybe there are a million sites that only host a single drawing of Mickey banging Minnie doggie-style. Or maybe they mean something different by the word "pornographic." But 1 million pornhubs? 1 million redtubes? I'm having a hard time believing this.
There are way more than 12 countries, so you know each country can't have their own holy month. Why do you think August being the countries holy month prevents other countries from having the same holy month.
August isn't the holy month, Ramadan is. Why do you think one calendar would prevent there being other calendars?
You can take away their rights, and you can take away their money, but take away their porn, and the people will revolt. :-D
*sigh*
I think it would be fairer to say that you can take away their money, their rights and their lives, but that story won't get posted on Slashdot until it involves porn.
The Indonesian government and military have tried to maintain a complete media blackout on the ongoing human rights abuses -including torture and murder- in the occupied territory of West Papua, which was annexed while the world looked away. This oppression has been going on for a generation, but nobody chooses to care, because of Indonesia's status as the largest pro-US muslim country in the world.
But yeah, boobs. Let's support those horny Indonesians by slashdotting bringbacktheporn.com. That'll get the add revenue going.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
This is how - jailing atheists and closing Christian churches.
You can't approximate Ramadan by calling it August. it's based on a lunar calendar that is 12 to 14 days shorter each year than the Gregorian calendar. This means it moves relative to the Gregorian calendar each year such that Ramadan can/has/will occur alongside every month in the Gregorian calendar. You can call it a month because it is (maybe even more accurately so considering month comes from moon) but it shouldn't be called August since you might as well call it January or mid-March to mid-April.
Indonesian here. The article exaggerates a little on how much it really impacts the people here. Most people here don't care about it, cause most of them know "Where there is a will, there is a way.". They will always find a way to circumvent these restrictions. In fact I just did, change the DNS server, and you're done. So yeah, the actual situation here is not as bad as the article make it out to be .