My response to: ayummysliceoflife.wordpress/2013/06/07/between-arbitrary-and-benevolence/ 1) "What harm is there if the Internet is left on its own" - Why should the Internet be free of the same regulations that regulate other media? This I have never understood. Why should the Internet be a place where ordinary laws and governments must stay clear of? This is the argument I keep hearing especially in the Western Press. The internet in every country should be subject to the same laws that regulate our lives in the real world. Whether we should repeal the print and broadcast media laws that were existent before the advent of the internet is another discussion. But before they are repealed, the internet must be brought within the ambit of existing laws. 2) “which can be easily dealt with under the Sedition Act and other laws.” - As I argued, this is perplexing. How is charging people with subversive acts that incite insurrection better than asking them to take down content within 24 hours? If a nasty government was in power, they do not need to use these new soft regulations to clamp down. The room to abuse these regulations is so much less than the ISD and Sedition Act or even laws on criminal defamation. 3) “In MDA’s case, the government executive branch has the free rein to arbitrarily decide what counts or may be defined as contravening “public interest, public morality, public order, public security and national harmony.” – Why would it be arbitrary? The Executive already interprets every part of legislation and the constitution when it governs. What makes people think that the interpretation of this particular regulation will be arbitrary when they happily live under all other laws that presumably are not arbitrarily interpreted? 4) “Why should the executive government have such a free rein on definition? Can we not imagine a scenario where the executive government abuses its power to declare that something has contravened the “public morality” when it has not?” - The executive has as much free rein to interpret this as it has on all other parts of legislation. 5) “In an excellent book by Jothie Rajah published by Cambridge University Press, she notes how many important terms many of our legislation such as the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act, the Legal Profession Act, the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, and the Public Order Act, go undefined. This allows the executive government to have free rein over how to define the illegality of certain actions and contravenes the rule of law principle that there must be clarity and transparency of definitions. In addition, in many of these legislation, including this most recent one by MDA, once the executive government has decided on a certain course of action, there is no recourse to the courts. So, where does this place our judiciary system?” – This is a far bigger discussion than the MDA regulations. As the writer points out, the Executive already has the power to interpret these Acts. These new regulations are no different. Whether these powers OVERALL should be curbed by Constitutional change is a far bigger discussion. 6) “To the extent that the press must indeed be checked, they should be checked by other methods rather than executive government regulation (which is prone to partisan abuse). There are examples all over the world that we may or may not learn from.” – Executive regulation is prone to partisan abuse? Is this a reason to not have executive regulation for anything then? It is not. If a rogue government wants to abuse executive regulation, do you think it will abuse these weak regulations or let’s say the Sedition Act? Or the ISD? The “executive regulation is prone to partisan abuse” excuse cannot logically be applied to only internet regulation can it? In these countries the writer mentions who appoints the Judiciary? A divine being? Who appoints the ‘Independent Press Commission’? Ghosts? It’s still the Government. A Government elected by the People. Who Guards the Guardians? In the end, in a democracy it is still a freely-elected government. As for Self-regulation, good luck. I refer you all to the Leveson Report from the UK. The corporate interests behind the Press will always put profit-making as its priority. Self-regulation is a pipe-dream. Get real please.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:54:41 +0000
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