RIM Agrees To Filter Pornographic Content On Indonesian BlackBerrys

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Another day, another example of RIM having to buckle to governmental pressure in order to stay in business. It has emerged that RIM has agreed to filter pornographic content on Indonesian BlackBerrys as a direct result of a government request. While this isn’t the first time that RIM has had to accommodate various government requests, it does represent the first time that RIM has greed to filter content from reaching users’ BlackBerrys.

RIM says that it’s “fully committed to working with Indonesia’s carriers to put in place a prompt, compliant filtering solution for BlackBerry subscribers in Indonesia as soon as possible.”

That Indonesia asked for the content filtering shouldn’t surprise anyone, particularly given that the country passed a “strict” anti-pornography law back in 2008.

And now that RIM has buckled to this pressure—what choice did it truly have?—the Indonesian government has asked RIM whether or not it would be able to move its service’s servers to Indonesia itself. (The servers are currently in Canada, where RIM is based.) This would make it easier for Indonesia authorities to keep an ear out for what its citizens are up to.

Oh well.