Internet Censorship

Those who have observed Malaysia's 12th General Election on 8th March 2008 will have noticed the Opposition won 5 states from the dominant Government via the Internet, which the Govt had little control over while they were controlling the mass media.

This was even mentioned by Vinton Cerf, Father of the Internet @ WCIT 2008 - which you can read more about him here in our previous post (at the bottom of that post). He mentioned about how the Internet has shown it plays an important role in politics, and it has even resulted in the world's first blogger to be voted into Parliament, which is Malaysia's case, is Jeff Ooi. So what has the Gov tried to do? Read on for more.

As a result, in order to work towards securing the 13th GE in 2012 from being lost, the Govt has begun to blog like the Opposition, and has recently decided to attempt to filter the Internet, just as how China tried with their Green Dam project.

However, as Jack of BrickGamers have said, if even the Middle Kingdom can give up (at least for now), perhaps it's futile for the Govt here to consider pursuing this when it actually contradicts the MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) Bill of Guarantees, which prohibits Internet censorship to encourage foreign investments in the country.

So far the Govt has said the filter is only to censor pornography, but we all know power can be abused in the wrong hands once laws are laid down, and in anycase, it still violates the MSC's Bill.