Proposed Rules Would Require Gov't Registration For Malaysian Press Sites

Malaysia's Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak has proposed mandatory government registration for web sites operating within Malaysia. This comes after the Malaysian government blocked the online Sarawak Report, and suspended a newspaper called the The Edge "for allegedly posting unverified information." Officials accused these news outlets of publishing inaccurate documents about a corruption scandal that linked the Prime Minister to 1MDB, a state-managed investment firm that reportedly lost billions of taxpayers’ money. ... The proposal to require news websites to register is seen by some as part of the government’s response to the rising outrage over the corruption issue.

censorship

[Roodvlees]

Apparently if the government is criminal it tries to protect criminals instead of trying to prosecute them. Pretty much like in the US where Snowden revealed how much of the government are criminals, but instead of prosecuting those people they are allowed to attack Snowden, hoping people will ignore the actual crimes.

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[Zontar The Mindless]

Do not attempt to summon up that which you cannot put down again.

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[Roodvlees]

One of the less obvious ways governments deal with pesky media is to get them fired. A law like this prevents those fired journalists to start their own news organisation so they can report the actual news, instead of just the party line.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Mashiki]

The US is one of the worst societies in human history for its political class to say "let's see how far we can push the public."

Holy fucking hyperbole. Apparently someone skipped medieval European history in school, also skipped history of China and SE-Asia while they were at it.

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[Roodvlees]

Legislation much worse already has, it's done by giving it a nice sounding name. Like the patriot act is totally against the constitution. And the armed public is usually very much against things like free speech. Nazi Germany had plenty of militia's like the US has now, they where the first to start harassing Jews.

Whom did Snowden help? Actually almost everything he revealed was about how western countries spy on their own, innocent, population. How the US pretty much stole money from it's allies by spyi

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[CrimsonAvenger]

To take just a single item:

How the US pretty much stole money from it's allies by spying on their negotiators so they would get a better trade deal.

Whatever gives you the notion that espionage is only done against enemies, not allies? Sorry, in the Real World (tm), a government spies on pretty much every other government that they can get away with as a matter of course.

Because, after all, this year's ally may be next year's enemy (note the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as a classic example. Two years after i

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[smithmc]

I certainly would not be in favor of such mandatory registration, but... where does it actually run afoul of the First Amendment? Would this actually be "abridging the freedom of speech or of the press"? Assuming, that is, that there were no restrictions (apart from those that already exist, e.g. incitement to riot) placed on the content published on the registered sites?

"unverified information" . . . ?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Doesn't that expression validly describe more or less the entire content of the Internet . . . ?

Well, that and porn.

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[davester666]

Well, it has been reported that the internet can be used for something other than porn, but I haven't seen anything to verify those reports.

Hell, I think I saw that report on NNN.

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[Required Snark]

And cats.

The tubes would collapse without the cats filling them up.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Inspired by Singapore

[romiz]

Malaysia is the close neighbor of Singapore, where news are either provided by state-owned companies, or censored as soon as anything displeasing the state is published. As a result the incumbent government never lost a vote, and it is perceived as uncorruptible even when the wife of the prime minister is appointed to rule those state-owned companies.

This can give some inspiration...