tesna.net

I heard in Indonesian news, currently Indonesian government instruct to all ISPs and NAPs to block access to youtube, multiply, metaface, even multiply. It’s caused by the controversial movie called fitna. So the government just decide to block all access to the sites spreading these movies to audience around the world.

Quoted from Wikipedia:

Fitna is a 2008 short film by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. The film explores Qur’anic motivation for terrorism, Islamic universalism, and Islam in the Netherlands. The film’s title comes from the Arabic word fitna which is used to describe “disagreement and division among people”, or a “test of faith in times of trial”.^[1]

On March 27, 2008, Fitna was released to the Internet on the video sharing website Liveleak in Dutch and English versions. The following day, Liveleak removed the film from their servers citing serious threats to their staff. On March 30, Fitna was restored on Liveleak following a security upgrade, but was promptly removed by Wilders after the copyrighted Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons were used without permission. A second edition featuring a new cartoon was released on April 6.

I do understand that the movie itself really controversy because it creates a bad image on a particular religion, which is Islam. Majority of Indonesians is Muslim, but come on. Blocking the whole several sites is a just fuc*in ridiculous. Multiply for instance, it’s a community/blogging/social site for God sake, and some Indonesians even opens up a store and earns money for a living in there (I read this on detik.com). Youtube, well, mainly I watch youtube videos just purely for entertainment, watching funny stuff, but there’s a lot of positive stuffs in there also. Youtube even doesn’t display any porns.

Heck my site maybe also will be blocked, since I’m providing the link to wikipedia site which provides a link to fitna movie on the liveleak. Or the next step Indonesian goverment will also blocked wikipedia? Google also provides the ability to search particular content depends on the syntax used. Google can search based on filenames also. Is Google is the next target?

Although I’m living in Indonesia currently I’m not affected by the blocking, I can still access youtube, metacafe, liveleak, multiply, etc. At least for now. Maybe because I’m using vsat connection to Japan satellite (well, that’s just my guessing, as I don’t exactly know the network configuration/diagram on my office, but my public IP appears from Japan, and the main contractor in here is a Japan company). Maybe soon Indonesia will have similar system like “The Great Firewall of China” in China which makes all content in and out the internet must pass content filter on the government systems. I’m also heard some IT guy according to Indonesian officials also poses blogger on the similar threat with hacker/cracker? Is he smoking something?

I think Indonesian government better focused on developing its economy, fighting poverty, focus on education and health, fighting CORRUPTION, enforce the law, etc. Indonesia pretty much a fuc*ed up country sometimes. Regarding the enforcing the law, I’m really meant it. From simple things like throwing a waste on the streets, not obeying most road regulations, selling cigarettes/alcohol to minors, etc to drugs, gambling, bribing, corruption, porns and prostitution is really common in Indonesia. I felt like there’s now law in Indonesia, since they are never enforced so the people keep breaking it. These are a lot more important things to do than dealing with a movie on the internet.

Blocking these sites is not the answer. I’m sure most people in Indonesia are well educated and mature enough on dealing movies/any other content like that. Yes Muslims needs to defend their religion, but blocking these sites isn’t the answer.