Internet 'filters' come on line in Singapore

Internet 'filters' come on line in Singapore

SINGAPORE (AFP): Singapore started enforcing tough new rules Sunday to block pornographic and other controversial content on the Internet.

The city-state's three Internet access providers had been given a Sunday deadline to install systems to censor "undesirable sites" broadcast from overseas, so as to shield subscribers from smut as well as racist or subversive material.

Access to so-called "hot sites" with explicit sexual content was being strictly controlled, subscribers said.

Those who tried to access blacklisted adult sites were told, "the site you requested is not accessible."

Subscribers who logged on to SingNet, the biggest of the three, were met by a message which read: "If you can't access overseas sites, please configure your browser to use proxy servers."

Proxy servers are special computers that service providers have identified as the most effective means of controlling access to foreign-based sites containing pornographic material and other excesses.

All of the more than 100,000 Internet subscribers in Singapore have been directed to adjust their computer software so that they enter cyberspace only through the proxy servers.

The system would check a user's request to enter an Internet site against a list of banned sites before granting access. They would also store locally a database of often-accessed and acceptable foreign material to speed up access.

Informed sources said the authorities had already identified and banned about 100 sites.

The new system is in line with a regulatory bulwark unveiled in July by the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA) to shield citizens, particularly the young, from pornography and check political and religious content on the Internet.

Cyberway, the newest of the three Internet access providers, already had such a system in place. Pacific Internet and SingNet have been engaged for the past month in adjusting their networks to conform to the new rules.

The island of three million people is the first country in Southeast Asia to put in place a regulatory framework to check abuses on the Internet, a vast repository of information.

"Like all technology, Internet is a two-edged sword," SBA chief executive Goh Liang Kwang said earlier this month. "There are useful information as well as garbage on the Internet. Some are racist, discriminatory, even obscene."

Officials said the regulatory framework would evolve with technological advances.

The rules ban pornography, depiction of violence, nudity and sex and propagation of sexual "perversions" such as homosexuality, lesbianism and pedophilia.

Content which denigrates any race or religion, promotes deviations such as "satanism," jeopardizes public security or national defense, undermines public confidence in the administration of justice or brings the government into hatred or contempt will also not be allowed.

The government's moves to tame the Internet come amid the medium's soaring popularity in Singapore, where within a year's time the number of subscribers has grown 650 percent to more than 100,000.

Officials have projected three-digit growth in Internet subscriptions at least for the next two or three years.

The authorities say the regulations are intended to encourage "responsible use of the Internet" and its "healthy development," ruling out any adverse impact on Singapore's effort to position itself as a regional information hub.