By Jeremy Au Yong, Deputy Editor, Singapolitics
On Jan 18 last year, anyone who tried to do a search
on Google would have found the company's multi-coloured logo blacked out. At
the same time, over at Wikipedia, none of the millions of articles was
accessible.
The pattern was repeated across some of the Web's biggest
brands. Amazon, Imgur, Flickr, Pinterest, WordPress, Craigslist and many others
had parts or all of their sites blacked out.
That was not an attack by hackers. It was a protest, the
largest coordinated online protest to date.
The sites themselves were protesting against two pieces of
proposed legislation in the United States - the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa)
and the Protect IP Act (Pipa) - aimed at making it harder for websites to sell
or distribute pirated material.
How Washington intended to do that, though, was to empower
the authorities to get a court order requiring an Internet Service Provider
(ISP) to take "technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to
prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the
foreign infringing site". The Bills would prevent sites from linking to
any websites that are "dedicated to the theft of US property".
While many could agree with the desired intent, the problem
was that it effectively amounted to trying to censor the Internet. Asking an
ISP to block access to a site deemed rogue felt to many like the government
exerting complete authority on the hitherto free-wheeling World Wide Web.
And while Sopa and Pipa remain outside the law books, the
battle was neither the first nor the last time netizens and governments would
face off over Internet regulation.
Recent years have seen a push by governments everywhere to
try and rein in cyberspace.
In July last year, the Russian Parliament adopted a Bill
that created an Internet blacklist, forcing site owners and ISPs to shut down
those on the list. At the same time, the British Parliament debated a
communications Bill that would give the police and intelligence services the
power to compel ISPs to collect and retain information about users.
Last month, the US House of Representatives passed a Cyber
Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa) which would allow security
agencies to obtain information like e-mail addresses and Internet browser
histories without first having to get a search warrant or a court subpoena.
Last week, Singapore had its own controversial Internet
legislation.
On Tuesday, the Media Development Authority (MDA) announced
a new online licensing scheme that would apply to news websites that fulfil two
criteria: If they report an average of at least one article per week on
Singapore's news and current affairs over a period of two months, and have at
least 50,000 unique visitors from Singapore each month over a period of two
months.
The individual licences have to be renewed every year and
those required to apply for a licence would have to put up a performance bond
of $50,000. The licence makes it clear that online news sites are expected to
remove content that is in breach of MDA standards within 24 hours, once told to
do so.
The new regulations are, said MDA, to ensure greater parity
between the regulations that apply to the mainstream media and online media.
While the stated intention is reasonable, implementation
will prove problematic. Despite attempts at such laws all around the world,
there hasn't been one yet that properly balances sensible regulation with the Internet's
organic nature.
At the heart of the issue is the seemingly limitless
diversity found on the Internet. In the MDA's case, it will not always be easy
to draw a line around what it considers "news websites", and many
have issued calls online for clarity on the rules.
It is simple enough to say that a website carrying news that
is run by a news organisation should be a "news website". MDA has
also said views published on personal blogs do not amount to news reporting.
But what about the rest? What about aggregators, forums, social networks,
online classifieds and everything in between?
A site like Propertyguru, which serves primarily to sell
real estate, could conceivably cross the thres-hold of having one news story
about Singapore a week and more than 50,000 visitors a month. Should it be
forced to get a licence? If not, why not?
How will MDA deal with platforms like Facebook and Twitter
which do enable individuals or organisations to send regular updates about
Singapore to an audience in excess of 50,000 a month?
The inability to predict every possible test case tends to
leave lawmakers with the singular option of defining the laws as broadly as
possible, while choosing to enforce it only on a small minority.
Because it cannot properly define all types of sites it
wants to capture under Internet regulations, the Government ends up covering a
whole bunch of sites it should otherwise have no interest in regulating.
And that is a sure-fire way to trigger a pushback from
netizens. This was the case with Sopa, Pipa and the Russian Internet blacklist
and certainly seems to apply to MDA as well.
Reactions to the new licence have been overwhelmingly
negative so far, with many viewing it as an attempt to curtail expression
online, even if the MDA has stressed it is not clamping down and content
standards have not changed.
The doomsday scenarios that many online are discussing
include forcing small-time operators who cannot put up $50,000 to shut down or
simply blacking out sites that do not comply. It is not yet clear what would
happen to sites that have their licences revoked. Will telcos be asked to block
them?
Ultimately, it may very well be that MDA never had any
intention to use the new licensing scheme to stifle free expression online, but
because of the broad nature of Internet regulation, no one can tell for sure.
And that makes the regulations troubling.
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