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Although Internet filtering of smutty Web sites is high on its agenda, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology conceded that Indonesians remained among the world’s top 10 visitors of porn sites.

Ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday that the grim reality was based on the ministry's data compilation and monitoring of various sources on the Internet as of mid-2010.

He added that developing countries made up the majority of the top 10 nations clocking the most visits to pornographic  Web sites, although he named none of the others.

“Although we have a great deal of difficulty in blocking porn sites, that will not deter us from continuing in our efforts,” Gatot said.

He said there were some 400 million pages of porn available on the Internet on a daily basis, showing the magnitude of the problems faced by the ministry.

The quest to block access to Web sites carrying pornographic content began last year when Tifatul Sembiring, the minister for communications, announced on the eve of Ramadan that some 80 percent of “offensive sites” were no longer accessible to Indonesian users.

A month later, the ministry conceded that loopholes remained and questioned the commitment of Internet service providers.
Five months later, the ministry said the ISPs were still expected to fully comply with their obligation to block porn sites and that it was drafting a series of measurable key indicators to assess their compliance.

The indicators, Gatot said, would be used to gauge the providers’ efforts to block porn sites. Poor performance would lead to a written reprimand, and three warnings would result in the revocation of the provider’s license.

“We used a persuasive approach from August to January, and we fully understand that there may still be loopholes despite their efforts, but we are going to apply stricter measures so that they intensify their filtering,” he said.

Muhammad Jumadi, a spokesman for the Indonesian Telecommunication Users Group, agreed that strict law enforcement was needed to ensure the compliance of ISPs.

Acep Syarifuddin, a researcher at ICT Watch, a media study group that campaigns for healthy use of the Internet, preferred educating Internet users rather than blocking content.

“No matter how sophisticated a filtering technology is, it will not last for long. We prefer to focus on educating the younger generation to make them understand what they may or may not access on the Internet,” he said.