The limits to freedom

I know some of you come to Malaysia Today not to engage in an intellectual discourse but just to whack. So I expect these types of people to no longer visit Malaysia Today. That is not a problem and I am not sorry to see you go. You are free to take your rubbish elsewhere because we really do not treasure readers like you. I would rather have 250,000 intellectual readers than 1,000,000 nut cases who do not add value toMalaysia Today.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

6,640 websites blocked since 2008

INAPPROPRIATE: They contained pornographic and malicious content

(NST) - THE Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has blocked 6,640 websites since 2008.

Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Jailani Johari said the blocked websites contained either pornography or malicious content or infringed copyrights.

"As of June this year, the commission is investigating 29 cases of websites with questionable content."

However, Jailani said, the ministry preferred the educational approach in encouraging Netizens to self-regulate the content that they post online. 

He said this was because of the expansive nature of the Internet, which made it impossible to control the contents of personal websites and blogs.

"Although the government feels that there should be no Internet censorship, it does not mean that people can post seditious or malicious things online, especially those that can create disunity," he said in reply to a question by Senator Abdul Shukor Mohd Sultan during questioning at Dewan Negara.

Shukor wanted to know if the government planned on censoring websites and blogs that carried defamatory content against the government and royalty.

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Malaysia Today, too, was blocked for two weeks back in August 2008. They blocked it the day of the Permatang Pauh by-election, which Anwar Ibrahim contested and won. In fact, they blocked it as the votes were being counted so we were not able to report the results.

I then met up with the MCMC to try to negotiate with them. They agreed to meet but told me that the meeting was unofficial and off-the-record. So we met in a Bangsar steakhouse.

MCMC’s main bone of contention was regarding the comments in Malaysia Today. They were not happy with the anti-Malay and anti-Islam comments posted by our readers. If I can assure them that I will moderate the comments and not allow the anti-Malay and anti-Islam comments to get through then they will agree to unblockMalaysia Today.

I agreed and gave them my assurance that I will ‘control’ the comments and they unblocked Malaysia Today. The next day, however, the police came to my house to detain me under the Internal Security Act for the crime of ‘insulting Islam’.

Before that, the police had raided the homes and/or offices of more than 40 of our readers who had posted comments in Malaysia Today. Somehow the police managed to trace these people. The police also confiscated their computers as evidence.

All were let off with a warning except for one, an Umno Blogger, who was charged for sedition. In fact, we helped raise his bail although he is an Umno Blogger. As far as we are concerned he is a victim of persecution. Therefore, political affiliations should not stop us from doing the right thing or prevent us from fighting for justice for that person.

Since May this year, Malaysia Today is again being flooded with hate postings. We get about 200-300 comments a day of which more than half need to be deleted. If you think that the comments posted in Malaysia Today are downright nasty you should see the ones that did not get posted.

I suspect a lot of these comments are being posted by cyber-troopers who have mischievous intent. The fact that most of these comments are out of point and deviate from the topic gives rise to this suspicion. They not only hijack the discussion and bring it into a totally unrelated topic but they indulge in Malay- and Islam-bashing as well.

What surprise me most are the anti-Chinese and anti-Indian comments posted by the non-Malay readers. Why would the Chinese and Indians want to post comments that whack their own race if not merely to justify the anti-Malay and anti-Islam comments? This certainly appears very suspicious. 

I have three other people (other than me) who update Malaysia Today. All three are Chinese and they get to pick what they would like to post. Even though sometimes I do not agree with some of the postings (such as those that ‘embarrass’ Islam), I do not interfere with what they post. They have absolute freedom to post what they want.

The problem we face is regarding the job of moderating the comments. None of our people want to moderate comments because they hate reading the comments. So getting someone to read the comments and then approve or reject them does not seem possible. No one wants to do that job.

I too am tired of looking through the comments so I may stop doing this. I have already stopped doing so over the last few days -- unless I really have nothing to do. And that is why of late you have probably seen less comments posted and even when they are it is very ad hoc.

There are two schools of thought. One is that I allow a free-for-all. That means we do not moderate comments. We tried that once and it did not work. People do not understand freedom of speech and they turned Malaysia Today into a rubbish dump.

The other school of thought is that we do not allow those who are not registered to post comments. That means you need to register to post comments. That may be the better option. It will, of course, open you to risk because then the police can trace you if you post irresponsible and nasty comments. 

But then if you commit a crime you should pay for it rather than expose Malaysia Today to the risk of getting blocked like the more than 6,000 other websites, which, as the government said, have questionable, malicious and defamatory content.

The signals we seem to receive is that a big clampdown is about to begin. Before Malaysia Today ends up as one of the victims of this clampdown I have no choice but to act. And since none of you care about what happens to Malaysia Today then you have to lose your privilege of airing your views. (Yes, it is a privilege, not a right).

I know some of you come to Malaysia Today not to engage in an intellectual discourse but just to whack. So I expect these types of people to no longer visit Malaysia Today. That is not a problem and I am not sorry to see you go. You are free to take your rubbish elsewhere because we really do not treasure readers like you. I would rather have 250,000 intellectual readers than 1,000,000 nut cases who do not add value to Malaysia Today.