Asking gahmen for permission

Some group of blogger, including our dear Cherian George, scott and justin (zhuang) has submitted a recommendation paper to MICA for the purpose of liberalising internet regulations in Singapore. Just as I don’t wanna ‘flood’ this place with a whole text of quoted words, click here for the full article on sgpolitics.net.

A summary of the paper:

The paper points out the various defects in current media laws and regulations governing internet content in Singapore, such as instituting vague restrictions which gives authorities too much leeway in interpretation of the law, conferring arbitrary power on the Media Development Authority (MDA) to penalize owners of websites that in its judgment have violated MDA’s own rules, and the regulation of political content which is unjustified in principle and unenforceable in practice.

In short, media and internet laws in Singapore are in need of urgent review. Laws will always be necessary, but the rule of law demands that the laws are clear, and that there are checks and balances to ensure that the laws are only used to address legitimate social needs. Too many of the existing regulations do not meet these benchmarks.

The paper proposes ways of addressing the defects in current laws and regulations with respect to 3 main areas: (a) political expression, (b) hate speech and (c) sex and violence.

These proposals are designed to be consistent with fundamental principles of free speech. In contrast, Singapore’s laws and regulations governing speech on the internet have grown ad hoc and topsy-turvy, involving way too much administrative discretion, leading to the current confused and over-regulated state of affairs which results in free speech being infringed upon.

And I realize how press secretaries in Singapore are incredibly power people. I have come across LKY’s personal press secretary not once, twice but i think at least a dozen time in his memoir (it’s amazing why he is not mentioned by name). This time round, Lee Boon Yang’s press secretary replied to Alex Au:

Dear Mr Au

My Minister would like to thank you and your blogger friends for the effort in putting up the proposals for Internet deregulation which you had emailed to him on 20 April 2008.

MICA is well aware of the fact that Internet and new media technology have evolved by leaps and bounds since we introduced our light-touch approach in 1996. Back then, MICA had recognised the potential growth and impact of the Internet, and the tremendous opportunities and benefits that it will bring to all of us. We were also wary of its negative aspects. Hence, our response to the Internet was to take a balanced light-touch approach. Our intent with this light-touch approach was to foster the growth of the Internet and to enable us to exploit its vast potential while safeguarding our society from its undesirable aspects. That 79% of our households subscribe to broadband and many Singaporeans especially the younger citizens own a blog or participate in some form of new media clearly show that the light-touch approach had not been without merit.

To keep up with the fast-evolving new media landscape, we have been reviewing our light-touch approach and are considering how we could take a lighter touch approach. We have appointed the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS) in April last year to study the new media and how best to refine our regulatory framework.

We will consider the views expressed in your proposal and other feedback in our review.

Yours sincerely

K.BHAVANI (Ms)
Press Secretary
to the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts

If you ask me, it can be summarized as this:

Dear Sir,

Noted.

Regards,
Press Sect to Lee Boon Yang

This is a computer-generated letter and no signature is required.

Alright, enough of laughs. Actually I managed to find somewhat a splitting viewpoints on this letter. There was this furore somewhere about this bunch of bloggers being ‘f**king nuts’, and to quote one of the comments on singabloodypore,

“If you have to ask government for freedom, then it is not freedom.”

Regulatory measures in Singapore seem to go in a back-and-forth cha-cha. They take two steps backwards, then another three steps forward. And this dance is almost manifested in a different way, albeit tackling the same issue. For example, the NPPA was targetted at controlling foreign press and their interference in domestic politics, but when publications manage to play around the rules (i.e. outsmart MICA) like how FEER did by changing its weekly format to a monthly format, MICA plays back by announcing that their status as a declared offshore paper required them to be subjected to the conditions plied to other offshore papers, and hence they are required to pay the security deposit and also appoint a local representative so they can be served lawyer’s letters easily.

Also, the ‘narrowly-tailored’ rules of NPPA w.r.t. foreign publications is coupled with a broad-ly defined defamation law in Singapore. That works amazingly for anyone suing newspapers and publications for libel.

Now internet regulation comes into play. The officials argue that strict regulation is required to uphold social harmony and peace, yada yada. And each time this topic arises in any context, we are always given the “Remember the ________ (insert any tensions/scares/threats/riots/fraud/cheats/anything that’s bad) incident that we had in the 19XX’s?”

Yes, no doubt we have to take into consideration incidents such as the Maria Hurtogh riots and whatever clashes of the races we had before, but these incidents should also be viewed in the context of time. Racial relations were rocky at best back then, and in contrast, we are far better off today even with the supposed ‘tension’ arising from 9/11. History should be taken into consideration when reviewing regulations, but it should be not a stumbling block and an excuse to stay on the safe side of caution (just because you cannot afford to lose face if something screws up some day.)