Research In Motion Ltd (RIM) is working to block pornographic Web sites on BlackBerry services in Indonesia as the nation with the world’s largest Muslim population widens a campaign to clean up the Internet.
RIM is in talks with domestic phone carriers to find a “prompt, compliant filtering solution,” the maker of the BlackBerry said in a statement yesterday.
RIM has until Jan. 21 to begin filtering porn sites or face legal action, including revocation, Indonesian Communication and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring told reporters in Jakarta yesterday.
That may include a complete blocking of the BlackBerry’s Web browsing capability, Gatot Dewa Broto, a spokesman at the ministry, said by phone.
The move highlights the mounting challenges RIM faces in expanding overseas as countries such as India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates tighten restrictions on mobile e-mail.
In August last year, Sembiring said all Internet pornography sites would be permanently blocked in Indonesia.
“This isn’t just Indonesia,” said Heru Sutadi, a member of the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body, which oversees the industry. “Middle Eastern countries are also being hard on RIM. By looking at the big Indonesia market, I’m sure RIM will obey.”
Shares in RIM, based in Ontario, fell 14 percent last year on the NASDAQ after surging 66 percent in 2009 as it faced mounting competition from Apple’s iPhone and smartphones equipped with Google’s Android operating system.
The Indonesian government will meet with RIM and six mobile-service providers next Monday to ask them to filter out pornographic Web sites, Muhammad Budi Setyawan, director-general of post and telecommunications at the ministry, said yesterday by telephone. The ministry is targeting pornography, not RIM, as most Indonesian providers block such sites, he said.
“If RIM agrees to filter, they may take two to three days to discuss or hold the meetings with the operators,” Setyawan said. “If they do not want to filter, we will ask RIM to close the browser service as a whole.”
RIM has not complied with several of the government’s requests, including blocking pornographic sites and building a server in Indonesia so authorities can “conduct investigations against perpetrators of crime,” Sembiring said by mobile text message yesterday.
The company should also open representative offices and more service centers in Indonesia and hire domestic staff to serve the demands of more than 2 million BlackBerry users in the country, he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last