**TRS EDITORIAL PIECE**
The Media Development Authority (MDA) said the new individual licensing framework for online news sites is not intended to clamp down on internet freedom.
The changes resulted in a strong public backlash from the online communnity.
While on the surface, it seems to only affect Yahoo! The implications of such changes are huge. The changes are set to take effect from Saturday and prior to the announcement earlier this week, no one had heard anything about the plans.
There was no consultation with the public, nor was it presented for questioning or voting in parliament. It really is a sad day for democracy in Singapore.
Maybe the government is trying to fool the public by insisting that the changes are not major and are in fact just put in place to maintain the status quo of ‘proper’ regulation. That’s probably why they only wanted to include Yahoo! Singapore News.
No one would make a fuss over Mediacorp and SPH websites being ‘regulated’ as these are controlled by the government anyway. Perhaps they thought the people would simply agree that Yahoo! can afford to pay the $50 000 bond.
At the moment, not that many people are affected by it, but how can we let it go unchallenged when it’s seriously eroding democracy.
While currently aimed at controlling racially insensitive posts and articles, it has the potential to be used as a complete censorship tool. If there’s any article or post that MDA doesn’t approve of, all they have to do is send a quick e-mail and then 24 hrs later…. *Poof* problem solved.
It could easily be used to stem seditious, defamatory or contemptuous posts. But where is the line drawn on content that is actually offensive vs content that simply makes the government a bit unhappy?
The implementation of it is also totally bizarre. MDA went to the effort to come up with the number 50 000 for unique monthly visitors, but how are these calculated and how can websites know if they will be affected?
The Online Citizen said they clearly matched the criteria, posting web statistics showing that they had over 170 000 unique visitors monthly but MDA insists that they do not currently meet the criteria.
Traffic rank comparisons using one of the most reliable webstat sites Alexa.com, shows that some of the ‘news sites’ slated for inclusion such as tnp.sg and zaobao.com have much lower traffic than other independent news sites that have not been included. What is the point of creating ‘criteria’ when it is not even applied uniformly?
Is it ok that the government can enact such potentially freedom-crippling regulations without any public or parliamentary consultation? Where is the transparency about the way the new regulations operate?