Since early June, videos allegedly showing the pop singer Nazril Irham, popularly known as

Ariel, having sex with his actress girlfriend, Luna Maya, and a married television presenter, Cut
Tari, have spread rapidly across the country via social networking sites, cellphones and pirated
DVDs.

Like celebrity sex scandals anywhere, the case has prompted plenty of head-shaking. But this
being Indonesia, where laws old and new criminalize acts deemed immoral, those involved in the
scandal could suffer more than just embarrassment.

The police have so far questioned at least two celebrities about the videos, and news reports have
said that investigators are on the trail of people suspected of distributing the clips online.

The chief detective of the national police, Gen. Ito Sumardi, said the authorities probably would
use a controversial 2008 anti-pornography law to charge those responsible for distributing the
videos. The law was passed at the urging of Islamic parties, against the resistance of some
secularists and religious minorities. It includes heavy penalties for those who download or
produce pornography — which critics say is defined so broadly that it could effectively
criminalize many of Indonesia’s diverse non-Islamic cultures.

General Sumardi said the celebrities could also be charged if it could be shown that they
produced the videos for the consumption of others.

“It depends on whether the clips were stolen, if the laptop was stolen,” General Sumardi said.
“We’ll know after questioning if it was really stolen, when and where. We have to check their
alibis.” He added that the police could also arrest those involved with the videos under a separate
information technology law.

The sex scandal has opened a debate in Indonesia between defenders of free speech and social
conservatives who see the situation as a reason for further moral regulation.

“The spread of this video is very worrying, especially if the government or the information
minister try to use it to implement a ministerial regulation on new media content,” said the
chairman of the Alliance of Independent Journalists, Nezar Patria. “It’s kind of a test, not only of
how far the anti-pornography law can be used, but also a test of how the instruments of the
government respond to content that wasn’t around five years ago.”

The newspapers initially gave the videos front-page coverage, and news channels broadcast
extracts of the clips until they were rebuked by the national broadcasting commission. Articles
have carried reports that around 30 videos of Mr. Irham with dozens of women have yet to be
released.

Discussion of the scandal, dubbed Peterporn after Mr. Irham’s band, Peterpan, briefly became
the most popular topic worldwide last week on the social networking site Twitter.

In response, the police have raided Internet cafes and schools have searched students’
cellphones.
Advertisers have deserted the celebrities allegedly involved in the scandal, despite their denials.
Both Mr. Irham and Ms. Maya, who interviewed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
during her visit to Jakarta last year, have seen their advertisements for the soap brand Lux
removed.

Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring, a member of the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party that
pushed the 2008 anti-pornography law through Parliament, said the scandal was a good reason to
revive plans that were floated this year to censor the Internet. The ideas were shelved after public
objections and the lukewarm response of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

“Indonesia is still free, but in the future we will try to minimize the amount of access to
pornographic sites,” Mr. Sembiring said, adding that any filter would also block blasphemy,
gambling, violence and online fraud.

“I think today the people understand about the usefulness of that regulation,” he said.

“We need to make the same regulation as Australia, the same as Singapore, but not like China, I
think.”

Mr. Sembiring said that it was unlikely anyone would be charged under the anti-pornography
law for the videos, but that those involved in one video could be charged under provisions in the
criminal code banning adultery.

Despite the tough talk from conservatives, the videos remain freely available. For social liberals,
they reflect Indonesians’ attitudes toward religion and sexuality — evident in traditional
customs, often-racy popular culture and a thriving commercial sex industry.

“We try to close our eyes that it doesn’t exist in Indonesia, but it does exist in Indonesia,” said
Julia Perez, a model, actress and singer famous in the country for skimpy outfits and sexually
suggestive lyrics.

“We cover it with religion, we cover it with culture, but we have to open our eyes, us Indonesian
people, that there exist people like that who love sex — sex is normal, sex is like what you
need.”
MOSCOW

Enlarge This Image

James Hill for The New York Times

WHAT WOULD LENIN SAY? At the X’Show convention in Moscow, a latex-wrapped

woman hands out fliers.

PAST the topless woman dancing in a cage and the towering transvestite perched on three-inch
heels, Ksenia Borisova was trying to grab the attention of passers-by. Her wares were housed in
immaculate displays, complete with colorful instruction manuals, but after five years in business
she was still having difficulty generating much interest.

As always, sex toys are a tough sell in Russia.

“We have to try to enlighten the customers,” said Ms. Borisova, an owner of Erotic Fantasy, a
supplier of German-made intimate equipment in Russia. “No one knows what, why and how:
what lubricant is, why a dildo is needed, how to use vaginal balls.”

Other vendors at a recent convention for sex shop owners in Moscow were similarly vexed.

Two decades after government-imposed prudishness ended with the Soviet collapse, Russians
still shy away from embracing European-style sexual mores. Despite a burst of licentiousness in
the early 1990s, when pornography and prostitution surged through the country, the sexual
revolution has never really taken hold here.

Sure, sexual innuendo is commonplace: on television and in glossy magazines and in the
provocative attire of women on the streets. Advertisements with busty models have long replaced
posters of square-jawed women scything wheat. But, when it comes to the bedroom, Ms.
Borisova and others said, tastes here tend toward vanilla.

“There is just no sexual culture, none,” said Nadezhda Dovgal, one of the organizers of the sex
shop convention, called the X’Show. “People are still ashamed.”

This is partly the legacy of the Soviet era, she said. The Soviet government tried to drive all talk
of sex under the covers, leaving public life effectively neutered. A lack of private space,
especially in the communal apartments of major cities, limited access to sexual encounters even
more. “There is no sex in the U.S.S.R.” was a satirical slogan of the perestroika era.
“We have always had sex, but information on this topic was practically nonexistent,” said Yelena
Khanga, who hosted Russia’s first talk show about sex in the 1990s, coyly named “About That.”
In general,” she said, “it was not acceptable to speak about sex.”

She said that when she started her show, which for the first time openly confronted topics like
H.I.V./AIDS, homosexuality and workplace sexual harassment, “it was like a bomb went off.”

Though such topics are less provocative these days, the annual X-Show, which is in its ninth
year, might still be a bit edgy, even if largely subdued by the standards of such events in the
West. Beyond the caged strippers — and the coterie of men drooling over them — were models
decked out in the latest latex fashions demonstrating proper whipping techniques.

Ms. Dovgal, the X’Show organizer, framed the convention as a social welfare project for a
country where sex education is practically nonexistent.

“We know that we are needed to help people preserve their families,” she said. “It is not
important for us whether your partner is a man or a woman,” she said. “What is important is that
there is harmony in the relationship.”

While Ms. Dovgal’s recipe for marital bliss might not be for everyone, it is clear that Russian
families are in crisis.

There were three divorces for every five marriages in 2008, according to the Russian statistics
agency.

Russia is also suffering from a demographic crisis. The population declined by 6.6 million
people between 1993 and 2008, according to a 2008 United Nations report. Emigration and a
high mortality rate among middle-aged men are part of the cause. But so is a low birthrate.

To get couples copulating, some Russian officials have come up with several ideas that Ms.
Dovgal and her sex shop colleagues would certainly endorse. For several years the government
of the Ulyanovsk region has set aside a special birthing day, when couples are given a day off to
help reverse the population decline. Prizes are given to mothers whose children are born on June
12, Russia’s national day.

Yet, for all Ms. Dovgal’s concern for families (“Unfortunately, we are not allowed to admit
people younger than 18 years old,” she said), demographics did not seem to be the main concern
for many visitors at the X’Show.

“I’m into fetish mostly — pretty clothes, corsets, leggings, collars, whips, things like that,” said
Olga Podolskaya, 41, a psychologist. Though the exhibition lacked the extravagance of similar
events she had attended in Berlin, she said things were improving.

Earlier, she said “the products in sex shop were limited to plastic penises.
“Now, along with an increase in selection, there are — how do I put it — various extra services:
seminars, photo sessions, there are stories and various books.”

Indeed, the outlook for Russia’s sex toy industry does not necessarily appear to be as grim as
some vendors described. In the last 10 years the number of sex shops in Moscow has grown from
around 5 to over 150, Ms. Dovgal said, and there are many more Internet-based companies.

Sergei Agarkov, a prominent Russian sexologist, framed the change as sexual evolution rather
than revolution. He said he believed that Russians were slowly growing more comfortable with
sex as a new post-Soviet generation has come of age.

“These are the carriers of a new culture,” Mr. Agarkov said. “They are completely different
people. They are relatively free. They do not have the prejudices that their parents had. And
together with them, attitudes towards sex are changing.”

That seemed to be the attitude of Dmitri Karablin, a 20-year-old student, who along with his
girlfriend was perusing the kiosks at the X’Show in search of vibrators and a sexy maid outfit.

“People are less ashamed,” he said. “I have a young mother and can talk to her about these
things. She even once recommended a store that I should go to.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 15, 2010, on page E1 of the New York edition.