Vimeo meets Censorship in Indonesia

Indonesia has been censoring sites that it found to be contrary to their government's view of the world. This has led to some rather odd choices. Over the weekend the government there decided that the popular video sharing site, Vimeo, was to be added to the list of websites that should be blocked. The rationale being that this site could serve of pornography and other such things.

I can't help but see the parallel with the Turkish government and their attempts to block Twitter in order to maintain power. All of this was because of leaked material which ostensibly demonstrated corruption that could have potentially destabilized the government.

From Liputan 6:

Chief Innovation Officer of Telkom, Utoyo Indra, through his personal Twitter account ( @ iutoyo ) confirm the truth of the news. He explained that the blocking of Vimeo is a follow up of an official letter admin TRUST + Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Communications) that has spread to the entire Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Internet Service Provider in Indonesia as of May 9, 2014 yesterday.

But, the government claimed that it was the Telco. The telco, in turn, pointed back to the government. It seems like a censorship rendition of the keystone cops of old.

Example:

@donnybu sampai saat ini @apjii tidak menerima surat edaran yg katanya diemail.

Translation: "to date @ APJII not accept that he emailed circulars" (Google Translate)

Basically, "not it".

Not entirely sure what is going on but, the core of the issue is that Vimeo is currently blocked in Indonesia.

(Image used under CC from Martin Pettitt)

Tags managementNetworkingtwitterVimeo

Show Comments