The Drama Begins. Government Plans To Block 4Shared.

I'd knew this day would happen eventually, the day I fear the most. And yes, I am being dramatic when I have to say that Indonesian government through its minister of communication announces plans to block websites that distributes pirated music (MP3) files. Don't get me wrong, I support this effort by the government to save Indonesian musicians, but when they announce to block sharing site 4shared, it's a different story.

Quoted from Okezone while attending an event in Bandung, Minister of Communication and Informatics, Tifatul Sembiring states that the ministry haven't blocked any site after the official initiative announcement a few weeks ago and that they're focusing on blocking the big sites like 4shared.

Yes. 4shared.

Tifatul explains to the press that 4shared is a big-capacity website that provides videos, musics and graphics, violating government regulation on copyright infringement, that means 12 years imprisonment according to Indonesian law.

Again, don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE FAN of Tifatul but I'm not a big fan of the regulations he made, I have to say. And I'm gonna have to say NO again to this one. First of all, 4shared is not a website that provides videos and music files. 4shared is a website that provides the space for their users to share files with each other, so the files is uploaded by their users and people can complain when users upload an ilegal file and they'll delete the file. Easy.

In fact, in their terms of service, 4shared also prohibits users to download ilegal files.

So far the government haven't actually execute the plan to block 4shared, announcing the plan to block it is enough already to make a series of complaints from Indonesian users about the move. I think what the government should do is to partner with 4shared to eliminate the ilegal music files uploaded by Indonesian users rather than blocking the site. I'm sure that 4shared people will be more than happy to help the government protect Indonesian musicians.

You know, like Kaskus and Indowebster does.