INDONESIA — Bowing to pressure from the Indonesian government, Research in Motion (RIM) is filtering porn from its BlackBerry devices.
The company is reportedly cooperating with the Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology that put pressure on RIM last January threatening to ask the six domestic telecommunications operators of BlackBerry’s Internet services in Indonesia to stop supporting the company if it didn't block porn.
According to the Penn Olson Asian Tech Catalog RIM is now setting up the guidelines, details, coverage and Internet filters in the country and will cooperate with Indonesian mobile service providers to develop “an effective and compliant filtering solution.”
Since 2004, BlackBerry has amassed more than 3 million Indonesian users and despite its high price, sales growth has spiked 500 percent, making Indonesia the primary market for RIM in the Asia-Pacific region.
But because most BlackBerry users are young people and Muslims, moral and social concern has been raised over easy Internet access to content like porn and social networking, prompting the government’s crackdown.
RIM was recently given a two-week deadline and has complied.
The report said the new filter is getting mixed reviews but it doesn’t appear it will have a major impact on BlackBerry use in the country.