MDA clarifies online news licensing scheme amid criticism

May 31, 2013 11:18 PM Yahoo Newsroom

Singapore’s media watchdog on Friday clarified new licensing rules for online news sites after the scheme was widely criticised by Singapore’s online community as a move to further restrict press freedom in the city-state.  From June 1, websites that regularly report Singapore news and have significant reach will require individual licences to operate.

Currently, most websites are covered automatically under a class licence scheme. But the Media Development Authority (MDA) will require websites to be individually licensed once they meet two criteria. These are: 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 licenses have to be renewed every year.

Under the new framework, these sites must also put up a performance bond of $50,000, similar to that required for niche TV broadcasters. MDA said the move would place such sites on a "more consistent regulatory framework" with traditional news platforms like newspapers and television stations, which are individually licensed. The licence makes clear that online news sites are expected to remove content that is in breach of MDA standards within 24 hours, once notified to do so. This material could cover content that is against the public interest, public security, or national harmony.

Under the scheme, online news sites will need to obtain individual licences if they report at least once a week on Singapore’s news and current affairs over a period of two months, and are visited by at least 50,000 unique IP addresses from Singapore each month. They must then put up a performance bond of $50,000 and comply within 24 hours with any of the regulator’s order to take down objectionable content.

Ten sites currently fit the media regulator's criteria, of which seven are run by Singapore Press Holdings.  The 10 are: straitstimes.com, asiaone.com, businesstimes.com.sg, omy.sg, stomp.com.sg, tnp.sg, zaobao.com as well as the sites for Today newspaper, ChannelNewsAsia and Yahoo News.

Currently, news sites are automatically granted a “class license” that already require them to observe guidelines prohibiting content that incites racial or religious hatred, among others, said the regulator.

More than 20 activists and bloggers behind alternative Singapore news sites such as The Online Citizen, publichouse.sg and TR Emeritus called on MDA to junk the licensing scheme, which they fear would impact citizens’ ability to “receive diverse news information”.

Media Development Authority (MDA) said the new licensing framework would apply only to sites focused on reporting Singapore news and that bloggers’ personal sites would not be subject to the new licensing terms. “The framework is not an attempt to influence the editorial slant of news sites,” MDA asserted.  MDA said it would only step in when complaints are raised to its attention and when it has assessed that the content is in breach of the guidelines. In the past two years, it has only issued one take-down notice for the “Innocence of Muslims” video.

Also, the watchdog clarified that the $50,000 performance bond need not necessarily entail cash up front, and that licencees can consider a banker’s guarantee or insurance. The bond was among the features of the licencing framework that raised concern. The bloggers and activists who called on MDA to ditch the scheme said that the bond would potentially be beyond the means of volunteer-run and personal online platforms like theirs. The group had also said they believe that the introduction of the licencing regime had not gone through the proper and necessary consultation, and had been introduced without clear guidance.

Publichouse.sg’s Andrew Loh noted that the MDA’s clarification on what constituted reporting Singapore news did not jive with its statement on Tuesday defining a “Singapore news programme”.

“I think you're just confusing everyone,” he said in a comment on the MDA’s Facebook page.  Loh and other members of the public also posted on MDA’s Facebook page comments expressing anger over an interview with BBC in which Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information, which oversees the MDA, said, “As long as they [the public] go onto online news sites to read the news, I think it is important for us to make sure that they read the right things….”

Singapore has been accused of having restrictive controls over the media. Recently, it fell 14 places to a record-low 149th position in the latest annual press freedom ranking of Reporters Without Borders.

MDA blocks extramarital dating website

 By Walter Sim And Feng Zengkun

 Published on Nov 09, 2013

The Straits Times

EXTRAMARITAL dating website Ashley Madison has been banned here, after Singaporeans objected to its recent announcement that it was setting up a local portal. The Media Development Authority (MDA) said yesterday that it has worked with Internet service providers to block access to the site. Normal attempts to access the Canadian-based website from within Singapore brought the following message: "The website you are trying to access is restricted by the MDA." But as of last night, the website could still be accessed through virtual private networks. The site's ".sg" domain featured a woman holding a finger to her lips, with the site announcing it was "coming in November", and inviting people to register.

The MDA said the Government has a pragmatic and light- touch approach to regulating the Internet, and that it blocks a limited number of sites - most of which are pornographic - as a "symbolic statement". But Ashley Madison was targeted because it "stood out". "It aggressively promotes and facilitates extramarital affairs and has declared that it will specifically target Singaporeans," said the MDA. "It is against the public interest to allow Ashley Madison to promote its website in flagrant disregard of our family values and public morality."

But the authority recognises that site blocking is "not a perfect way" because it can be circumvented.

Ashley Madison, which was set to be launched here in the week of Nov 17 at the earliest, would have been made available in all four official languages, The Straits Times understands.

Members pay the website to contact each other. The brand reached Asia this year, first with a Japan site in June, followed by a Hong Kong site in August. Many Singaporeans, including Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing, have rejected the proposed local edition.

Almost 27,000 people showed their opposition by supporting a "Block Ashley Madison - Singapore" Facebook page. 

The National Family Council yesterday said it welcomed the MDA move to block access to the website, which is "detrimental to the foundations of a family". Chairman Ching Wei Hong said: "We are heartened by the responses of many Singaporeans who stood together with us... upholding the importance of commitment and fidelity in marriage." Mr Seah Kian Peng, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Social and Family Development, said he was "happy" to hear of the ban. He had filed a question for the Parliament session next Monday asking whether the site would be allowed here. "It is true that if people want to cheat, they can seek other avenues. But we should not make it any easier, knowing full well the intentions of the website," he said.

But others like marriage counsellor Tammy Fontana, 43, did not think banning the site would reduce instances of adultery. The lead therapist of All In The Family Counselling said: "People have been cheating long before there have been websites."

Extramarital dating site Ashley Madison 'not welcome' in Singapore

By Hannah Strange, agencies

25 Oct 2013

The planned local launch of notorious extramarital dating website Ashley Madison has sparked a public outcry in conservative Singapore. Extramarital dating website  Ashley Madison has raised social hackles around the world with its promotion of adultery. But in Singapore, its forthcoming launch has been met with staunch opposition, as residents and politicians insist its maxim that "Life is short. Have an affair" is unwelcome in the conservative city-state.

Singapore's minister for social and family development spoke out against the Canada-based website's planned expansion into the state next  year, saying it was damaging to the institution of marriage. "I do not welcome such a website into Singapore. I'm against any company or website that harms marriage," Chan Chun Sing said in a Facebook post. "Promoting infidelity undermines trust and commitment between a husband and wife, which are core to marriage," he said in the post, which he said was in response to media reports of the planned local launch. "Our marriage vows make it clear that marriage is a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman. This includes staying faithful to one another."

Ashley Madison, which facilitates "married dating, discreet encounters and extramarital affairs", has over 20 million users worldwide and has recently been pushing into Asia with launches in India, Hong Kong and Japan. The reported advance into Singapore, a society known for its strict social mores, has also prompted a Facebook petition with a rapidly swelling list  of supporters - over 13,000 between its establishment on Wednesday and Friday morning.

The petition, "Block Ashley Madison from corrupting Singapore", states its objective is to "gather sound-minded people to express our objection to the establishment of the shameless company, Ashley Madison, that thrives on shattered marriages, in Singapore".

Marriage is heavily promoted by the state in Singapore in order to increase the country's flagging birth rate, with government-supported dating services which encourage couples to marry earlier and have more children. Singaporeans are said to have some of the least active sex lives in the world, with surveys  by British condom maker Durex regularly scoring them low on both sexual frequency and satisfaction. 

Long regarded as a prudish society, where deviation from social norms is met with disapproval and even punishment, Singapore's growing affluence and a large influx of tourists and expatriates have helped liberalise attitudes in recent years. But the government and church groups, however, continue  to promote conservative values, and non-heterosexual sex remains a crime despite growing public acceptance of gay and lesbian lifestyles.

The trouble with trying to control the Internet

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.