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planned ministerial regulation on multimedia content that could give Internet service providers (ISPs) far-reaching powers to monitor all web content has been met with alarm by ISPs themselves.

The Indonesian ISP Association’s (APJII) Valens Riyadi said Wednesday that if the Communications and Information Technology Ministry insisted on pushing ahead with the regulation, ISPs would have to sift through all multimedia traffic in the country.

“The regulation will make it compulsory for us to monitor all the multimedia content running through our network, and report it every six months or so,” he said.

Article 8 of the draft regulation stipulates multimedia service providers must monitor all content contained, transmitted, publicized or stored using their services.

Valens said 230 ISPs in the country, currently registered with the APJII, had objected to the stipulation, particularly the obligation to monitor multimedia content.

“Technically, it’ll require vast amounts of manpower and equipment to monitor the amount of multimedia content passing through any one ISP,” he said.

“Besides, we don’t believe we have the right to choose what kind of content people can or cannot access [on the Internet].”

The ministry is sounding the public on the planned regulation, inviting all citizens to send their comments to ministry spokesman Gatot S. Dewa Broto by email at gatot_b@postel.go.id until Feb. 19.

To date, much of the response has been in the form of objections.

Gatot said Tuesday most of the emails had come from IT experts, bloggers, legislators and the media.

Karaniya Dharmasaputra, an editor at news portal vivanews.com, said the danger posed by the planned regulation lay in the way “it could be used by the authorities to suppress the power of the media”.

The Internet has in recent months played a pivotal role in serving to channel and spearhead public support of Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) officials as they faced trumped-up charges brought by the police and the Attorney’s General Office, and also of a mother of two charged with defamation.

Margiyono of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) said the government should be responsible for encouraging people to use the Internet constructively.

“The planned regulation is putting the onus of responsibility on the ISPs,” he said.

“They should be sorting out the infrastructure rather than the content.”

Valens concurred, saying, “The ministry’s putting a gun to our heads, because we operate with permits issued by the ministry.

“A ministerial regulation can’t be used to press criminal charges, so they’ve targeted the ISPs because we have permits that can be revoked.”

An NGO, ICT Watch, is currently campaigning for “safer” use of the Internet, while the Association of Indonesian Internet Cafés launched in 2007 a project to provide Internet access free of pornography, malware or phishing sites.

“These two [campaigns] are far more effective than the ministry’s effort, and have no negative impacts,” Margiyono said.