Delegates to a three-day Internet forum said all countries in the region wanted to stop the spread of offensive material such as pornography and racist literature.
But there appeared to be little consensus on how far such censorship should go or how it could be exercised. Host-nation Singapore imposes strict control of the web, licensing only three Internet Service Providers and obliging them to screen all material accessed by clients.
But most neighbouring countries have a far more liberal Internet system, encouraging self-regulation but imposing few controls on the number of service providers or their networks.
It's still up in the air what agreement on policing we can come to but self-policing will be the thrust, said Glenn Sipir, deputy executive director of the Philippines Council for Advanced Science and Technology.
The seven member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), which organised the forum, are at widely different stages in the development of the Internet.
Asean groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Singapore, with a wealthy population of just three million, has more than 150,000 individual Internet users and encourages its citizens to use the web to do a range of routine tasks, including applying for government permits and even some jobs.
At the other end of spectrum, most of Vietnam's 74 million people have almost no access to computers and the easiest Internet access is often via providers outside the country.
Officials said Asean states were also divided philosophically on the Internet, with some wanting to impose more political control over material on the web.
Opening the forum, Singapore's parliamentary secretary for the ministry of information and the arts, Mohamad Maidin Packer Mohamad, said some Asean countries had worried the Internet could erode our traditions and social values.
Our concerns include pornography, hate literature and other objectionable materials in cyberspace. Asean countries will need to develop their responses to these concerns to maintain values that they hold dear, he said.
Singapore Internet service providers use computer proxy servers which filter out requests for undesireable material.
Such material includes issues pertaining to national security, religious harmony and morals, said Ling Pek Ling, the director of policy and planning at the Singapore Broadcasting Authority.
But Sipin said some other countries, including the Philippines, were committed to more liberal freedom of speech on the Internet.
Political control would not be on the Philippines' agenda, he said.
Another delegate, who declined to be identified, said national control systems might not work because Internet users could simply by-pass them by dialing into Internet service providers in other countries.
