Jakarta – While admitting the task at hand will be difficult, Internet service providers (ISPs) said they will do their best to block pornographic websites amid continuing pressure including threats of punishment from the government.

"We are trying our best to be as precise as possible in complying with the government's rules and regulations," Indosat marketing manager Teguh Prasetya said.

He added that the company had run a porn website filtration system since 2008 under its "healthy Internet" program in which customers could request websites they wanted blocked.

"The program, previously requiring users to register, now works by default after the issuance of the information ministry's latest ruling that requires all providers to implement 'healthy Internet' facilities," he said.

The default program applied to Indosat users as well as the user of Indosat M2, Indosat's subsidiary, he told The Jakarta Post.

The filtration system is website-based whereby the addresses of websites detected by Indosat's anti-abuse team, a staff specializing in checking content, and a special search engine, are blacklisted and blocked permanently, he said.

"The name of the harmful websites still appears in search engines such as Google, but if you click on the link, it will be routed to another page which says that the site cannot be accessed because of its harmful content," Teguh said.

Telkomsel corporate communications general manager Ricardo Indra said the company blocked websites based on the 800,000 harmful websites listed by the information ministry.

"It is not a complicated job and we face no technical difficulties as an information technology-based company," he said, adding that all glitches had been resolved.

He said his company would increase the number of blocked websites based on the government's orders, "provided there are strong grounds" to do so.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring said the various methods of filtering employed by ISPs were not an issue. "The most important thing is that the pornographic material does not appear," he told the Post.

Tifatul said the authorities could charge ISPs directly under the law on pornography if they failed to block sites. If they remain defiant, he said, "They will then have to deal with the police."

Tifatul added that the regulations that applied to providers were included in the 1999 Law on Telecommunications, the 2008 Law on Information and Electronic Transaction, and the 2008 Law on Pornography.

Ministry spokesman Gatot S. Dewabroto said providers could eventually have their permits revoked if they failed to block porn sites. One of the conditions for the issuance of the ISPs operating permits stipulates that they must secure the Internet against pornography.

Telkom public and marketing communications vice president Eddy Kurnia said the government needed to hold "intensive discussions" with providers that had failed to impose 100 percent blockages of porn sites.

Eddy said a complete blockage would be a challenge to implement and that the cooperation of different parties would be required to achieve it. "The public must choose sites wisely, and seek that which is useful for education and learning, and ignore sites that are not important." he said. (gzl)