Indonesia temporarily blocks services from Yahoo, PayPal, Steam and Epic Games

The Indonesian government has temporarily blocked the online services of Yahoo, PayPal, Steam, Epic Games and some other companies. The companies would not comply with local legislation that requires them to register with the government.

According to Reuters the above companies were given until July 27 of this year to register with the Indonesian government. At the end of 2020, it introduced a new law that makes it possible for local authorities to request data from users of internet platforms if they deem it necessary. The new law also requires platforms to take content offline within four hours or 24 hours that is prohibited by local authorities. To make all this possible, internet companies had to register with the government.

According to a user on Twitter The ban is of a temporary nature and the companies have since been contacted by the Ministry of Communications with the request to register. Google, Meta, Amazon have registered with the local authorities, according to Reuters. So their services are not blocked in Indonesia.

The new legislation, known in the country as Ministerial Regulation 5, was passed last year criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation calculate. This organization considers government access to users’ personal data a violation of human rights. Human Rights Watch also criticized it. The law forms according to this organization a risk to the right to privacy and the right to free expression. Human Rights Watch was annoyed, among other things, by the fact that the Indonesian government uses a very broad definition of prohibited content.