Jakarta – The Communications and Information Ministry has rejected a recent call from the Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association (ICMI) to block search engine giant Google and video hosting site YouTube "for promoting violent and pornographic contents".
"We are concerned about the content of the websites [like Google and YouTube], but it's impossible to block them," ministry spokesman Ismail Cawidu said.
He said he had talked to ICMI chairman Jimly Asshiddiqie, who clarified that the demand was not an official recommendation from the organization but merely a personal aspiration of ICMI secretary-general Jafar Hafsah.
Jafar reportedly said Google and YouTube had made negative impacts on Indonesian people because the two sites could not filter the contents posted by people on them. Jafar added millions of websites promoting pornography and violence could be searched through Google.
However, Cawidu said Google could not be blamed for any pornographic content that people posted on the internet on their own websites.