Today (13.3.09) in Malaysia history is made albeit it is not for all. A few bloggers and blogger commentors were hauled to court and charged with sedition. One person was charged, pleaded guilty and had to pay RM10,000-00 or USD$2,800-00 for insulting the monarch in one of the state in Malaysia. A few other were charged all over the country but most pleaded not guilty and posted bail. It maybe amusing to see in the news people running to hide their faces but the charge and the conviction is not something to be taken lightly.
Some may say that sedition is an archaic law but I do believe people need to be control to a certain extent or "we got here what we got last week, which is the way he wants it". Er...for those who don't know, that is from the movie Cool Hand Luke and reused later by the defunct Guns N Roses (the current one don't count) in one of their songs in Use Your Illusion double album. I think it was Civil War.
Ops, sorry to be sidetracked there. Just to make a point, you need to know the law of the land before you do anything stupid. People on the internet still treat it like the wall of the toilet where they can write deragotary remark about other people. They think they cannot be traced like those spy movie where the cops need a few hours to tack the location they were at. They tend hide behind their anonymonity but they forgot there are smarter people out there. They were hunted and were hauled to court.
Tomorrow, 14.3.09, I will be attending a few meetings and conference. One of the conference is on blogging and law. Held in one of the university in Malaysia, it is going to be one of the first serious discussion by a panel of speakers, both lawyers, about blogging and law. I blogged about the matter in 16.2.09 and a few commented that it is a good thing to have. Access that post here. Maybe if I can ask the organiser to hold another one at a better venue and maybe longer than half a day to be filled with more speakers. But it may not be as free as this one.
I'll be posting about what I learnt from the event later. Here is a flyer for it and from what I told, there may be a few seats left but if not, if it is really well attended, standing room still can be taken up...
p/s - to visit the event site, go to www.eLawyer.com.my
4 comments:
yer right! great post!
argh... I missed it. sigh!!!
Any blogger should know that it's easy to find anyone's identity. When we put ourselves out in public, we need to understand that there are many people watching, with very many different thoughts and opinions.
This is the before post, will do a proper report about the after
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