Malaysia may go after blogs
p2pnet.net News:- Malaysia may follow China’s lead by introducing compulsory registration for bloggers.
The laws would, “control bloggers and prevent them from spreading ‘disharmony, chaos, seditious material and lies’,” says Straits Times.
Malaysia was on last year’s Reporters Without Borders ‘Countries to watch‘ list.
“Government intimidation of online journalists and bloggers has increased in the past three years, notably of Malaysiakini, the country’s only independent online daily whose journalists have been threatened and its premises searched. Summonses and questioning of bloggers has been stepped up recently, leading to self-censorship that harms democracy,” said RWB.
Deputy science and technology minister Kong Cho Ha has, meanwhile, accused some writers of posting controversial articles to attract readers, “but said moves such as registering bloggers would be difficult,” says the story, adding:
“He cited the posting of a photo on an opposition politician’s website last month of a Muslim male and a Muslim female lawmaker. It reportedly showed the man in a bathrobe with the woman lying on his chest in what appeared to be a hotel room.
“The photo sparked a scandal as the two were not married to each other.”
Now Malaysia needs cyber laws, “to check such misuse,” Datuk Kong said.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
China’s lead - Chinese bloggers under threat, October 24, 2006
Straits Times - Malaysia considering laws to rein in errant bloggers, December 4, 2006
Countries to watch - 15 Enemies of the Net, November 18, 2005
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December 10th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
For some reason, Malaysia is home to some of my favourite blogs.
No doubt the country is embarrassed of blogs that expose the country’s corruption, such as this one - http://corrupted-malaysia.blogspot.com/
Though there are “spicier” blogs that, due to legal crackdowns, have been defused into mostly innocuous material such as this one - http://www.sixthseal.com/
It’s always sad to see governments shutting up their own populace.