Blogger Registration in M'sia Mulled

My friend contacted me about a recent article in TheStar... The article was about blogger registrations in M'sia... The article quoted the deputy minister as saying that it's an idea to prevent people from spreading seditious materials and lies on the Internet...

Now, what do I think about that, since I'm actively blogging these days... The intention is good... However, the idea is not a good one and the execution will be horrible...

The idea of registering bloggers, is to be able to identify the actual person blogging, and take them to task for libel/defamation/sedition if it is ever needed... Well, making bloggers responsible for what they write, is a good idea, in principle... Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to incite and all that... However, is the idea of "registration" a good one??

Well, as the deputy minister had pointed out, it's fraught with problems... The government would have to get cooperation from various blog services, isp, nations and whatnots to identify any one blogger... I doubt that our country has enough resources to get this to work smoothly... And even if they can identify the actual computer that was used to post the blog, there's still the minor problem of actually tying that computer to the actual user... This will be extremely bad if the blogger blogged from a public terminal, like in their school library or a cyber cafe..

Even setting up something like the great firewall of China isn't going to help... Since bloggers can blog from pretty much anywhere in the world.. And now with modern mobile phones, they can even blog directly from these devices.. And I do not even want to imagine what such an act will do to the MSC.. So, that technique is not going to work either... From a technical standpoint, I don't really know what the government can do to stop these kinds of activities...

However, since I'm not a lawyer, I'm not sure if there's any ways to solve it via new laws... Trying to enact a new law to force all M'sian bloggers to register themselves is not going to be easy either... How do you define "blog" in the first place?? When does a website cross the line from a personal website into a blog?? How can you ensure the actual identity of the person who blogged the article?? Hmm... I dun fancy being the lawyer in this case..

As for bloggers causing disharmony and chaos, the only way to solve that problem is via education... If they're truly telling lies, then, the government needs to counter those lies with the truth... I'm sure that the media will be amenable to airing the other side of the story... Afterall, most people already know that you cannot believe everything you read on the Internet... So, it should be easy to counter lies then...

The problem is real... It's a problem that every government faces... Bloggers everywhere are free to write whatever it is that they feel like writing... And since no one is actually in control of the Internet, it's going to be difficult for any government to set up checks/blocks... The Internet wasn't designed that way unfortunately...

So, I don't know what kind of method the government would come up with to solve this problem... And I don't know how it is going to be enforced... I dun fancy being any government in this day and age... The people are becoming more empowered than ever... It must be extremely scary for any government...

"People shouldn't fear their government, the government should fear it's people." --- V for Vendetta