Govt Urged to Amend Computer Act

[HagenvonTronje]

Govt Urged to Amend Computer Act

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Prominent NGO workers from the social research institute, part of the Faculty of Political Science at Chulalongkorn University, have urged the government to rethink the law that suppresses freedom of speech on the Internet, in the wake of 500 websites being blocked.

Former Senator Jon Ungpakorn, as head of the Internet for Civil Law project, said at a seminar on the civil rights of Internet users, that Thailand's leaders should realise that no law can prevent people from voicing their opinions online.

He objects to the emergency decree, which he deemed was abuse by Thaksin and the two prime ministers that followed.

He said Somchai Wongsawat used the emergency decree to suppress People's Alliance for Democracy supporters and Abhisit Vejjajiva used it to suppress

Democratic Alliance against Dictatorship supporters, adding that the public is victimised by the law.

Jon Ungpakorn is now urging the public to be independent and not get caught up in the hostility between the two political camps that have forced the people to choose sides.

He says the government should amend laws that aim to suppress freedom of speech online.

Supinya Klangnarong, of the Internet user network, commented that so long as the political dispute remains unresolved, no one will regain confidence in the law as they believe their side is being discriminated against. She added that the political change so far has limited the civil rights of Internet users. This is demonstrated by the fact that 500 websites have been blocked after the Computer Act was put into effect and many suspects were arrested. This also resulted in harsh penalties, as in the case of Suwicha Takho, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for a lese majeste charge and violation of the Computer Act.

-- Tan Network Thursday, April 30, 2009

From

http://www.thailandoutlook.tv/TOC/ViewData...?DataID=1014239

[DaleBlue]

If the government does that, can we also change the rules of ThaiVisa.

[RKASA]

Apples and oranges     Thaivisa is a privite entity they have the right to set thier rules, you have the right come or go as you please.  The gov. within reason has no right, to make the rules for them, or control your coming and going as you please.  Thats the issue. IMO  and you can ask TV to change rules, but they may or may not.  freedom on all sides.

[Mario2008]

This article is not about Thaivisa's forum rules and we are not going to discus them.

[Crushdepth]

Thaivisa is a privite entity they have the right to set thier rules, you have the right come or go as you please.

Yeah, but the government can decide whether to allow the websites of private entities to be displayed within Thailand or not. Those of us living in Thailand who are subject to this law don't have the right to come and go as we please if the government decides a site should be censored. And since Thaivisa is a Thai-centric site, it would kind of suck if it got banned here. So there is a strong incentive to 'play within the rules', even if they don't make a lot of sense.

However, Thailand's situation is not as bad as some other countries I could mention, like Myanmar (the worst), China, Vietnam and sadly, Australia is also heading in a very nasty direction right now with its stupid 'cleanfeed' proposal and somewhat scary expansion of government 'monitoring' powers with not much in the way of judicial oversight.

[RKASA]

Right.   Apples and Oranges   TV is not the subject or even a problem, the internet law is the subject and a problem .  other part of my post 

   "The gov. within reason has no right, to make the rules for them, or control your coming and going as you please."  

Thats why the internet law needs better check and balence, its to easy to abuse as it is.

[HagenvonTronje]

This article is not about Thaivisa's forum rules and we are not going to discus them.

i posted this article in the NEWS forum as a reply or update on the freedom of speech issue in thailand. hereby i followed the rule that a post of newspaper article or similar material should not contain any additional user comment or personal opinion. that i wanted do with a second entry. second comment. but later i didn't found my entry again, confused me a little bit, but working on mutiple task at the same time and had problems with dropping and disconneting wireless connection i wasn't so sure if i had it sent it sucessful at all.

now i found it again, but in the "Internet, computers, communication, technology in Thailand" sub forum.

i never posted it here in the computer section. i would think the topics here focussed more on the technical aspects of the whole computer thing on not so much about the 'freedom of speech (online) & civil rights (online) aspects.

but i would never ever open a new topic with that 'news' above, but instead use the search engine and looking for a suitable topic to add this as follow up entry. one of the general rules RTFM includes UTFSE, every internet user or web board user should more or less follow this. there is such a flood of newly opened topics albeit there is always an old topic already there and usually much more than only one. dosn't matter if your topic is a question or some cool information you want provide for all.

in short - i am not a fan of open new topics and in my long history of participating the communication places in the net, newsgroups , webboards, interforum and so on, in only a few cases i opened a new topic.

using the search engine isn't so easy, looking for 'computer act' or 'internet law' difficult because the board own search engine calls three letter words like "act" and "law" to short.

looking for internet censorship, censor, freedom of speech and so on gives you much more results of topics to similar set of problems. so i did choose one thread, where i thought, yep, in a semantic way it is related to and it's also a thread with a fine basis for a good discussion, so copypaste this article here.

someone from the admin level must have thought, that was wrong and this belongs to the computer, communication and technology sub.board and deserve to be topic of it's own, a new thread.

what i don't like hereby is that i didn't get informed about this. so i was looking at the news forum, didn't found that thread again, question my own sanity, did i send it or not.

the second point i don't like hereby is, that is now looks like it was me that open a new topic here in the computer forum. i would never have done this, 'open a new topic' with that material in the computer forum.

with some edit notice or remarks by the admin or mod.: "entry moved from another thread to be an entire new topic and new thread here" it would be fine and i would have noting to complain.

i know it's against the rules to discuss moderator actions.

but i feel it should be also my user right to clarify here things and add that i didn't start or open that topic here. i don't demand that the moderators ask me first for permission to move 'my t' before they do so, that is not the matter. that is a moderators job, to move misplaced entries, topics. but when they do and 'upgrade' a previous reply to an entire new topic, please add an edit notice or remark.

for the topic itself, anything i wanted to add or comment would be more or less off-topic in the computer subforum. it's a political issue. political discussions, i think, mostly happen in the news subforum.

the school milk scandal wasn't moved to the food (,western,) in thailand, the rubber sapling scandal wasn't moved to the 'farming in thailand' forum.

move such a topic in the computer forum got provoke that some computer nerd, who doesn't care about plitics in thailand breach the forum rule number 9: Not to discuss proxies or other methods of bypassing government blocking of websites. (and hereby follow the forum rules just the internet rules or laws in thailand. so don't say it's apple and oranges, a couple of the forum rules based on that what is the law in thailand.)

so before my entry got upgraded to be a a new topic, a new thread, it was just a reply in another thread in the news forum, where the OT include the following words:

"The prime minister should be broadminded,"

Abhisit

said.

"If the respond allegations with allegations, his critics could say that the government does not allow itself to be criticised because it wants to reap vested interest."

Instead of attacking his critics,

Abhisit

said, Thaksin should have tried to argue the allegations with reasons and details.

"He should have explained how the allegations against him were not true. If he could reasonably argue against the allegations against him, his accusers will lose credibility themselves,"

Abhisit

said.

[Mario2008]

i know it's against the rules to discuss moderator actions.

but i feel it should be also my user right to clarify here things and add that i didn't start or open that topic here. i don't demand that the moderators ask me first for permission to move 'my t' before they do so, that is not the matter. that is a moderators job, to move misplaced entries, topics. but when they do and 'upgrade' a previous reply to an entire new topic, please add an edit notice or remark.

I don't know if a moderator moved it, but my comment was not directed at you but at DaleBlue and RKA SA

[HagenvonTronje]

I don't know if a moderator moved it, but my comment was not directed at you but at DaleBlue and RKA SA

for some of the rules, the mods/admins, when they inforce the rules, maybe face resentment and grudge by the 'normal' user. it would be good if it would make more clear that this rules follow the 'internet laws' in thailand. and a lot of us, users and mods, are not lawyers, so better be careful and sometimes overcautious.

e.g. instead of a simple "topic closed, comment deleted because it is against the forum rules" why not a "listen friends, the discussion goes now into a direction of some hot issues, some of them breach the law in thailand, thaivisa would be hold responsible for this even if that comment came from some anonymous newbie, we would remind everybody, to keep in mind that the law in thailand is somewhat different from the laws in your homecountry. maybe we are overcautious but our laywers recommend to close such thread /delete comments."

that would be also the explanation why some rules are not going to be discussed, it would be a 'Sisyphus task' anyway.

[Guest Reimar]

Just as a site note, I would suggest that member HagenvonTronje is using a normal writing style so it's more easy to read his post's. To start with an capital letter instead of a lower letter not even looks a bit better, it's a lot more easy to read.

Cheers.

[jeffer]

Reimar, it could be HagenvonTronje has a permanent disorder...

[surayu]

Hagen daaz really make sense to me and i would agree there is a lack of free of speech here somehow, there is really no way for TV to go around it? maybe with a server in The Holy City or something?....

[Guest Reimar]

There other countries like Australia or France where the censure is much higher than in Thailand. May you shouldn't forget that the most blocked sites are about the Lese Majeste Law or Pornographics.

AFAIK is, that around the world in every country many things are prohibit just regarding the existing Law in that specific country. There is nothing wrong with that.

Cheers.

[Crushdepth]

To give you an idea of how bad things are getting in Australia:

* There's a secret website 'blacklist'.

* If your website gets blacklisted, there's no way to get it delisted or to challenge the decision if there's been a mistake.

* If you link to a blacklisted website, you can be ordered to take the link down and fined tens of thousands of dollars a day if you don't.

And get this: Someone posted a link to a blacklisted site on a popular web forum recently. So the Australian Communications and Media Authority issued a takedown order to the company hosting the site (ie. the disk space provider). They were threatened with an $11,000 dollar a day fine, if they didn't force their customer to take the link on their webpage down.

I'm not sure how you can avoid linking to blacklisted sites if the blacklist is secret (oh the stupidity of government). But of course the blacklist has been leaked and yes, it contains plenty of mistakes.