Blogophobia continues in Kuala Lumpur… Malaysia is under ’siege’.
Blogophobia in Kuala Lumpur continues today with a new twist. Bloggers are so prominent these days in Malaysia that not only a Malaysian ministry had issue a gag order to national mainstream newspapers not to quote bloggers, one Malaysian Parlimentarian had suggested in today’s Parliment proceeding that Malaysian bloggers may have to register in the future.
This, the bloggers find, is very hard to swallow. There is no hiding now that someone out there in the Malaysia’s political circles are haunted by bloggers. But I am not surprised if they are, just take at the look at these caricatures of some of Malaysian bloggers (courtesy of Sheih of Kickdefella). If you think they are scary, what they write are even more hanting to some individuals.
I think the government is going in the wrong direction on this one, yet again. This is clearly going against the Government’s own no-censorship policy with regards to the Internet. They are now going to control what people write online the same way they control what reporters write and report on mainstream newspapers and national telivision. This new measure, if implemented, will demonstrate another Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia Can) feat.
Ironically, the proposal would only require blogs that are registered with local web hostings. I don’t really understand what they are trying to do. If the government wants to control what bloggers write, then they should not introduce a rule that apply selectively to certain bloggers only. It should be applicable to both local or foreign hosted blogs. If the Government realize that they have no means of enforcing that rule, then may I suggest to the Government that they do not implement such a goblog (silly) rule in the first place?
Can you imagine, there will be no more new blogs registered with Malaysia-based web hosting providers when this rule takes place. Malaysian bloggers would be happily hosting their domains elsewhere overseas, causing massive long term, even permanent losses to local service providers. This would not go down well with the spirit of Multimedia Super Corridor introduced by none other the Malaysian Government itself.
Less than 24 hours of the proposal by the Parlimentarian, the responses by bloggers are already appearing in the blogosphere.
Read The Making of The All Blogs by Rocky, one of the two bloggers that had started the storms in Malaysian blogosphere together with Jeff Ooi then the two were sued for defamation by News Straits Time and four other individuals.
Read also, Bloggers Unite by Nuraina and the latest, hot of the press National Bloggers Alliance set up by Rocky, The Frog and The Blog by Marina.
Acciaccatura also has an interesting post about Blogkage. Checkout Bloggers Unite! And My New Job by Sheih too.
In the mea time, it is interesting to find out that what goes around comes around. Nila Tanzil, another blogger (but she is from Indonesia) that had caused major havoc with another Malaysian authority, is in fact one of contributing writer to Malaysia’s own mainstream newspaper.
Blogosphere will never be the same again in Malaysia.
[tags]blogophobia in Kuala Lumpur, Jeff Ooi, Ahiruddin Atan, Nila Tanzil, bmogger have to register in Malaysia[/tags]
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POSTED IN: Bloggers United, Government, Malaysia, News, People
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