Ismira Lutfia, Jakarta – The Communications and Information Technology Ministry says it can block access to up to 3,000 pornographic Web sites a day, as part of Minister Tifatul Sembiring's plan for smut-free Internet.

Ashwin Sasongko, the ministry's director general for telematics applications, said on Wednesday that his office had already installed filtering software called the Massive Trust Positive in all Internet-enabled computers supplied to villages under the government-sponsored Desa Pintar (Smart Village) program.

He acknowledged, however, that with an estimated four million new pornography pages added to the Internet each day, it would be impossible to completely block access to such sites for Indonesian Web users, and called on the public to participate by reporting offending sites.

But Internet service providers say they need the government to formalize its policy before they can take steps toward blocking the content.

Valens Riyadi, from the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII), told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday that a regulation on the issue was necessary, "to ensure that what we do [in terms of filtering sites] doesn't violate public's right to access information."

He added the need for the regulation was stipulated in both the 2008 Anti-Pornography Law and the 2008 Information and Electronic Transactions Law (ITE).

Ashwin, however, argued that ISPs were better-placed to identify offending sites, saying "it should not be too difficult to filter pornographic content on the Internet" and that the ministry would provide them with the list if officially requested.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Telecommunications Users Group said it supported the ministry's antipornography campaign, but questioned how effective it would be, given that many Indonesians access the Internet through their cellphones.

"It's technically quite difficult to filter sites for a BlackBerry user, so we wonder if the government plans to rope [manufacturer] Research in Motion into doing the filtering," said Muhammad Jumadi, the group's secretary general.

Meanwhile, ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto told the Globe that the controversial bill on monitoring Internet content was currently being revised, after being widely panned by the public in February.

The changes include a new title, "Guidelines for Public Complaints on Unlawful Internet Content," signifying its change of focus to get increased public participation in the plan.

"Reports from the public should be justifiable and will be reviewed by a monitoring team, whose proposed makeup we've also changed to include 60 percent public appointees and 40 percent government representatives," Gatot said, adding that the team's chairperson would be selected through a vote.

The first draft of the bill called for a 50-50 split between public and government representatives, while stipulating that the team head be the current director general for telematics applications.

An almost identical plan in Australia ignited a similar public outcry, says Stephen Hutcheon, an online editor for the Sydney Morning Herald, prompting the government there, "to put off the bill for Internet filtering until after the election because [it was] very unpopular."

The bill, proposed by the Australian government, was initially aimed at blocking access to pornographic content and hate sites.

Hutcheon argued that the public backlash to the legislation should not be seen as approval for pornography.

Rather, he said, "they feel that any regulation could be used to prevent non-pornographic material from being published and there's a debate on the technical way in which it's going to be done, for example that it will slow down the Internet."

He said that while the government was carrying out research to disprove such objections, most ISPs were still leery of the filtering plan.

"I think one of the reasons is because there's a blacklist of Web sites that the government doesn't want to publish," Hutcheon told the Globe recently on the sidelines of a journalism workshop hosted by the Press Council and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. "It argues that if the list is published, people will find ways to access the sites."

Although the fears were warranted, he said, they conflicted with the key issue of government transparency and accountability.

"How do people know the government isn't blocking sites that in the future might be unfavorable to them and not actually have any pornography at all?" Hutcheon said. "People have no faith that the government will keep an accurate list."