The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has blocked popular pornography websites on the Internet since December 19, with the warning page (seen above) appearing when users try to access the sites. Some of you may be familiar with this page, since it appears on popular torrent sites ever so often (before the sites inevitably found a different domain to circumvent around this block).
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) appears to be fighting a losing battle with banning these sites due to the expansive nature of the Internet.
According to The Star, in 2013, MCMC blocked a grand total of 1,630 sites including 1,262 fake bank websites, 205 obscene websites and 106 websites in violation of Health Ministry’s Control of Drugs and Cosmetic Regulations. MCMC has blocked a total of 6,640 websites from 2008 to 2013. Deputy Communications and Multimedia Datuk Jailani Johari said that the ministry preferred educating the public and encouraging netizens to self-regulate than to resort to blocking the sites.
A quick search on “Malaysia porn website banned” had, on the first page itself, instructions as to how to bypass the block, with some even giving specific instructions to bypass Malaysian Government’s blocked pages. Some users scoffed at this frivolous attempt, stating that it is ‘ridiculously easy to circumvent’ while others reasoned that the more the government tries to prevent people from doing something, the more inclined the people are to try.
As the MCMC deputy himself admits, blocking a few, or even a few hundred, porn sites will not do much to curb some people’s curiosity (or well, horniness). In fact, at the time this article is written, one the obscene websites that is supposed to be blocked is actually still accessible (we won’t tell you which). So the announcement by MCMC is currently more like a marketing act for the said porn site, driving curious readers to go to the site instead of blocking them from it.
Even the article by The Star that brought the MCMC’s action on blocking the pornographic sites had initially reported that they found the sites banned can be accessible via different methods such as proxy servers, mirror sites and changing the computer’s Domain Name System. However, this statement has since been removed from the article.
Members of the popular Malaysian forum, Lowyat suggested that this may have been the result of an earlier statistic report released by pornhub. The Pornhub report, cheekily named, “Who Lasts The Longest?” ranked Malaysia at a higher than average time at 12:05 minutes. Internet users in Kuala Terengganu watch porn for the longest time, at an impressive (or embarrassing?) 12 minutes and 58 seconds, with Kuala Lumpur coming a close second at 12 minutes and 29 seconds.
Unfortunately, the statistics is no longer available for viewing as pornhub is blocked in Malaysia. All the appears is a sad Error 404 message.
The statistics were taken lightly by most Malaysians, however, with some joking that the only reason it took Malaysians longer to get off is because we have slower internet. Some kidded that Malaysians have a unique taste in porn that takes longer to find, or that Malaysians have higher taste, which means only the best porn will do and that is why it takes longer for Malaysians to get to the right porn on Pornhub.
Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem as if the Malaysian netizens are taking this ban seriously at all. The internet has conflicting ideas on whether porn is good or bad for an average user, with many claiming that porn is very bad for your brain and relationships, and others claiming that it might actually be good for you.
Whichever it is, the Malaysian government can do little about netizens’ habits and should probably try and find other ways to convince everyone that porn is bad. Maybe an auto-sharing function that links all the porn sites you visit to your Facebook page will do the trick.