Malaysian minister hatches blog control plan

A top Malaysian minister has proposed a controversial plan to classify bloggers in a bid to contain the information they send on the Internet, a report said Sunday.

Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said bloggers would be labelled professional or non-professional to prevent the misuse of blog sites, since professional bloggers would ensure their web content was based on truth.

Zainuddin did not elaborate how his plan would be implemented.

The proposal follows an unprecedented defamation suit launched against two bloggers who were critical of the government.

Prominent bloggers Jeff Ooi and Ahirudin Attan are being sued by the New Straits Times Press newspaper group for posts criticising the daily and the government.

Zainuddin, who has previously accused bloggers of using lies to overthrow the government, said "the classification will also facilitate any action to be taken against those found to have violated the country's laws."

"It is feared that these (blog sites) will be misused by those who have an agenda to spread slander," he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Star newspaper.

"By right, there should be a mechanism to control the phenomenon, including classifying bloggers as professionals and non-professionals," he added.

Opposition lawmaker Lim Kit Siang, with the Democratic Action Party, said it would be impossible to implement such a plan, which he described as "definitely an attempt to obstruct and impede free blogging."

"How are we going certify who is professional and non-professional? It is a ridiculous idea," he told AFP.

Lim, a blogger himself, said the government should instead fund bloggers to generate responsible blogging.

Another popular blogger, Raja Petra Kamarudin, who runs the blog site "Malaysia Today," said Zainuddin made many statements without "thinking them through properly."

"How do you evaluate what is truth? It is impossible to register bloggers. What if I refuse to register? How are you going to find out where the blogger is residing?" he said.

Rights groups have condemned government attempts to crackdown on bloggers, arguing that they offer a crucial alternative to the tightly-controlled mainstream media.

Agence France-Presse

Me: Another day of seeing democracy tarnished in Malaysia. Of course, then some of the peoples would then say, democracy in Malaysia is different than democracy in the West. To that kind of question, I would like to leave that aside and just ask them, How in the world do you define Democracy?

Some of my friends told me that all this democracy and other ism is just basically ways of the Illuminati to control us. Yep, true enough. Where does democracy comes from? Western country, right? What laws were they using then? Capitalism. Why? Because they wanted to fight another part of themselves, the Communist and Socialist. Believe me, the two people who introduced Socialist and Capitalist were friends, if not that they were from a same group of people.

The only way of attain democracy, to me, is none. There is no such thing as democracy, if some people were given absolute power. That is the mere problem happening everywhere, from United States of America to Japan. Whenever someone was given the green light, you will see the ego coming out from his head. And thus, war was started.

One simple example : The Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Before the events happened, the States needed the Commons to give them the green light, to bless their government to go away, even if it means an Unholy War.

Alright, enough on democracy. Now, on this blogathinga. Perhaps blogs needed to be control. We can see things like malaysiasucks.blogspot.com. Such blogs, perhaps might be controlled. But then again, how many Malaysians actually read blogs? The visitors' numbers might go up to 1 mil, but how many unique numbers? The urbanized areas like KL and JB, perhaps are opened to such things, but let me remind you, not everyone.

People in the kampung, it's like they care about politics. All they wanted is to have a simple life, having a place of their own, and quietly move along towards a future that they are sure of. For urban people, they know how dirty politics in Malaysia is, so they don't care. As long as their 'periuk nasik' aren't bothered, they won't care.

Politics to Malaysians are just satire. Influential people with great mouths speaking here and there, and makes people to laugh. It's just about that. Which is the reason why many Malaysians are yet to register as voters. They see the same ending everyday. "BN is gonna win for whatever reason it is. So, is there a difference if I vote?".

Honestly, there aren't any such things as dangerous blogs. Reason, these people will just say their words and after that, that's it. They won't take another step towards revolution. They can't. Malaysians are just too lazy to be revolutionists.

The thing that Zam need to stop is the porno sites, not these things. C'mon Mr. Zam, stop the politics and do something right, for all people, not just the BN. Thank you.