That being said, I don’t think it’ll ever be feasible to legislate what we can and cannot say online except in the broadest sense possible to allow for some flexibility; the fact that there are an infinite number of scenarios in which the law has to be applied works both ways in that too rigid a set of rules becomes superfluous when applied to scenarios it is not equipped to deal with.

The problem, I think, is one of oversight. My complaint that liberal interpretations of the prohibitions in the Act stems from this — we are essentially letting ourselves be governed, with respect to decisions about breaches, to a council or commission, or a body of people who are the final adjudicators of what is right or wrong; even the judiciary is is appointed anew with each successive term of government, and it ensures a certain level of checks and balances…

But a commission? Can you imagine your life, online or otherwise, governed by a group of theocrats as with Shariah law, with probably no recourse to modern law? I feel the same kind of thing can happen with the enforcement of internet regulations.

Even if it is argued that since the regulations laid down have been established by a statutory instrument effectively placing internet regulation within the jurisdiction of the courts of law, there still remains the problem of standards of judgement applied to content deemed obscene, indecent or hateful. Will judges appeal to ‘custom’? Are there precedents with respect to judgements about what is obscene or not, indecent or not..?

It worries me to no end!

I have however wrote about an issue like this before all these things came out though. The only way we’re not going to see something like this happen is when there is a recognised law stating specifically what we can or cannot say. It may not be good, but at least its a start that clears the grey areas.

How this is going to be done. That I haven’t worked out yet.

This is the result.

The above is purely a case of a threat of a suit brought against a blogger purely on grounds of defamation.

With respect to the rest of my comments above, the problem is the very possibility of legal hassle over the content of sites.

We should all be aware of the possibility of legal action taken in breach of the Communications and Multimedia Act for prohibitions listed therein. Per the provisions under the highlighted section (per link), there is the possibility of enforcement of the act on matters, for example, relating to obscenity are undefined specifically.

The content code, which regulation were are enjoined to adopt, declares that adherence is a possible step towards detering legal action for breach of said Act, but if you observe closely, the evaluation of what is ‘obscene, indecent, hateful’ and such are just as broad, with examples that, ironically, many would concur with.

But what is left unsaid? Neither the provisions of the Act nor code cater for all possible scenarios, and that’s where judgement by a commission, council, community, body of judges, whatever comes in — interpretation on whether a person’s in breach of said Act is to be decided by a bunch of people who have no oversight.

And because it’s not going to be transparent, both you and I can be called out for, say, breaching norms of decency or be accused of obscenity, and with what appeal?

It scares me.

Here is the thing, would WE as personal bloggers get sued because someone posted certain comments on our sites? The risk is there but I hardly think so. I think it depends on the type of content that we are writing and the type of comments we are getting in relation TO the post.

I do have a link you might find interesting though. It’s about how this AOL case might give us an idea on how we can protect ourself from being legal hassle while still upholding freedom of speech.

That aside, it’s a good reason to put a legal disclaimer in posts whereby comments can be liable to legal issues. It would certainly avoid catch-22’s.