JAKARTA (Thomson Financial) - Indonesia's main Internet service providers (ISPs) have restored access to YouTube and other sites carrying a controversial anti-Islam film following protests from web users, the ISPs said Friday.

They had blocked the sites Tuesday at the government's request, provoking a storm of complaints.

The government is facing accusations of censorship because of the ban, which many small business owners say is affecting their livelihoods.

ISPs said they would instead try block access to individual pages carrying the film "Fitna".

"Access to YouTube and several other sites has been reopened after Internet providers received overwhelming protests from users," said Heru Nugroho of the Indonesian Internet providers' association.

"We discussed the complaints with the ministry and they agree with us," he said.

No comment was immediately available from the Communications Ministry.

Access to the popular video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking site MySpace was blocked Tuesday following protests against the film, which intersperses images of terrorist attacks with quotations from the Koran.

The Alliance of Independent Journalists said the move amounted to censorship, comparing it to "destroying a restaurant to kill a fly," while the Jakarta Post, in an editorial Friday, called it "dumb and dangerous".

"Indonesia's commitment to freedom of expression and the right to information, both of which are guaranteed in the constitution, are now being put in doubt," the newspaper said.

Nugroho said many owners of Indonesian small businesses were affected by the blocking of YouTube and Multiply.com, a networking site.

"Many of our users use YouTube or Multiply for their business," he said.

"We will block direct links to the web pages that have the film. It's the film we are concerned with, not YouTube."

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has banned screenings of "Fitna" and barred the Dutch lawmaker behind it from entering Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

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