Indonesia's information ministry said on March 28, 2008 that hackers compromised a government Website in the country and kept it in that state for many hours as a sign of protest against the new anti-porn law that prohibits pornography on the Internet.

Indonesia's information ministry said on March 28, 2008 that hackers compromised a government Website in the country and kept it in that state for many hours as a sign of protest against the new anti-porn law that prohibits pornography on the Internet.

To demonstrate their protest, the hackers first posted to the information ministry's Website, an image of a male model totally bare on the top. Then, they posted a note suggesting that the new law seemed to be drafted merely to mask the stupid actions of the government.

Appearing at a spot above the image, the message congratulated the ministry on framing the law. However, the posting, which appeared on March 27, 2008, was removed eleven hours later, according to Sukemi, a spokesman for the Communication and Information Ministry, as reported by THE AGE on March 28, 2008.

Further, Ferdinandus Setu, an official at the ministry, said that the message appeared to point at the legislation that the parliament had just passed. Setu said that the Website was taken offline for a short period of time but had been currently restored to normal functioning, as reported by Inquirer.net on March 28, 2008.

The law that the parliament passed on March 25, 2008 makes posting or accessing pornographic Websites liable to a punishment for a maximum of 12 years in prison or a maximum of 1 Billion Rupiah ($107,000) in fine. It also prohibits accessing or posting of threatening material or gambling sites.

However, Sylvia Sumarlin, Chairman of the Indonesian Internet Providers Association, alerted that it will take some time to block all pornographic Websites, as reported by Inquirer.net on March 28, 2008.

Sumarlin said that his association has recommended for a government to form a body for nationwide monitoring of Websites for unacceptable content and blocking of those that are offensive. He said that the government agreed to implement the recommendation but that would take some time. However, for the present the information ministry was suggesting the deployment of filtering software.

Also, the ministry planned to begin distributing software on March 29, 2008 to help Internet surfers prevent pornographic sites on their browsers.

---