Hmm... Here's the issue, and it's not even a summary.
As we all are aware, SPH has in recent (years) stopped the
dreadful Durai and his bunch of simpletons who would resort to
anything to the point of shamelessness to harm the public in order
to further their evil.
After this, this Mr Cheong actually, instead of thinking of
protecting the people who'd have exposed or tried to stop such evil
and minimised scandals from exploding in national interest, is
thinking of further protecting the companies against defamation
online!
And if Durai is a good person, if Durai is going to run a
company proper in the interest of the state, do you even think he'd
touch defamation?
The reason why Durai had touched defamation and proceed on to
harm so many using the court is precisely because this sort of
company are meant to harm, and Durai himself is a scoundel!
Do we need to protect resourceful and often connected companies
who have easier acess to the media and relatively affordable to
hire legal service instead of the small people in Singapore?
If I am not wrong, if this Mr Cheong's recommendation got
through, all those who have previously touched on Singtel, M1,
restaurants, Time-shares, edu centres, constructions, and such
issues could be dragged in unwittedly with their participation in
Omy, Tomorrow.sg, STOMP and in various blogs and forums. By right,
if the government unwisely allows this, whatever before this
implementation should not be considered; but who can guarantee
that?
So if this piece is passed, what about other
'recommendations' in the future?
Which could includ authorising tracing of all's details if secret
services have not done so, and back tracing everything.
There is a problem here, and a very big one because this is
chain effect coming, and it is up to those involved online to take
a serious view.
By right, most of our blogs and forums if under foreign server
or simply in cyberspace should not be under the sole jurisdiction
of a lone country. And even USA which has total disregards to the
UN, their laws develop to protect the reasonable parties.
Mr Cheong's recommendation to protect the company against
defamation is hence a threat to the nation as this only inclines
towards helping to protect more Durai-s, and to produce more
scandals. And that the intention behind is highly questionable.
Why?
Where there is virtually little protection the commoners
got online and offline, why is he tipping the balance and proceed
to protect the companies when it is obvious that good companies do
not embrace defamation act to win over the market?
And this recommendation is pretty extra. Why do I say that? The
recommendation itself is assuming that the cosmopolitan can license
and contain all attentions and authoring which are to be assumed to
be entirely Singaporean in nature. And we all know this is crap.
Since a blog or a forum is under judgement and participation of
international parties in a cyberspace. Is this the sole
jurisdiction of Singapore?
If Singaporean chew gums made in China in Johore, is that the
problem of Singapore court? That is regardless you can see him chew
gums or not.
So this recommendation is pretty extra, because originally, we
already have defamation act. If we were to be now pushing this new
recommendation... it has to be doing so rather barbarically, and
why do we this when Singapore can just use the current defamation
act to do whatever it wants?
I am particularly very disturbed, because of Durai, and YMCA
(Lam threatened the blogosphere, remember?), plus a long list of
scoundels whereby Ming Yee is now under fire, and this Mr Cheong
has to come out with such a unwitted recommendation to protect the
companies against defamation?!
Does he think that the bloggers have the authority not to be
personal entities?
We cannot afford or allow more scoundels to mess up Singapore
further. This involves you people online, including me.
There is a public consultation on this. Actually, here online,
I'd like to say No to that recommendation. In this, I am also
saying No to old NKF. And I am saying No because it is the small
people online who need the protection more!