1 post tagged “internet”

Woke up this morning to this new article Cyber law mulled to block lies in blogs and I thought, here we go again.

As you will see from that news article, another bright spark in government has suggested that, "We need to have stricter cyber laws to prevent these bloggers from disseminating disharmony, chaos, seditious material and lies. 

We are talking about creating cyber laws to control those who misuse the Internet."

Where was this bright spark just 2 weeks ago during the UMNO General Assembly where there was a free flow of sedititous and racially inflammatory speeches and a keris bandied about? How about taking immediate action against these guys, because there is already a mosaic of relevant laws already in place, no need to spend time and wasting tax payers' money to draft yet another self-serving and redundant piece of legislation. This is yet another classic example of the odious hypocrisy which ails Malaysian politics today.

A lot of people either don't know, ignore or forget about section 3(3) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 which says, quite simply, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting the censorship of the Internet." Of course, there is the Sedition Act and the all time favourite of the government, the Internal Security Act which can be used to silence bloggers, but really, it's high time that politicians grow up and realise that what they should do is to allow an open and honest discussion about taboo subjects like race and religion. Sounds naive but unless people are allowed to discuss these things openly, it will always remain a sensitive issue and we will always be beholden to all kinds of prejudices and lies. 

Heaven alone knows when those in power will realise that these knee jerk reactions to want to control the internet are quite futile. Yes, it is possible to prosecute a couple of bloggers and make an example of them, but such actions are like building a sandcastle to protect the beach against a tsunami.

I might be an idealist, but I believe in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty treatise where he argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he contends, if a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma.