Forum Website Owner Gets Suspended Jail Term

[Thai at Heart]

What it doesn't say is whether he removed it immediately after the complaint?

So if someone graffitis something offensive on a building, does the building owner go to jail?

Does the owner of this website now get to sue the user for damaging his website and his reputation?

The logic of this is that all you have to do to get someone to get a criminal record is to put an offensive bumper sticker on his car and have him drive around Bangkok unaware for a day then file a complaint. Now that would be a quick way to get all the politicians out of parliament.

[dwain]

thaivisa.com/forum/register.html pretty much clears this domain and it's authority team of all general legal back lash.

I run a forum in western Canada (10k local mem) based around the dance music scene. Throughout the years I've come across many geo-sensitive subjects (majorly US vs. CA age limits, dress codes, security strictness).

What I've learned is the primary domain/data owner of the site with a standard privacy policy and/or terms conditions (registration agreements) in place is NOT accountable for specific individual(s) (or groups) who ignored said agreement upon registration and then abused the sites service(s) to slander someone and/or discriminate someone/thing. This/these individual(s) can be easily and quietly identified within the system with the administration while complying with authorities (private messages, IP addies, passwords etc).

Websites based around an illegal niche topic are exempt and subject to the owners/startup's negligence.

I bet whatever side is in judgment has such a standard agreement (one which comes with ALL public social software's upon registration) and is still being held accountable for it's members actions (my thought without knowing 100% of the sitch).

Basically if I had to give up your info to protect the rest of my user base I would in a heartbeat. I have no respect for someone (group of peoples) who comes to "my house" and don't take off their shoes.

Hope im being topical.

(.d)

Edited July 24, 2009 by dwain

[George4]

"The court initially sentenced Pongwit to 2 years and fine of Bt40,000 but commuted the penalties by half after he pleaded guilty"

Am I reading this correctly?

How do you plead Khun Ponwit? Not Guilty

"Ok" says the judge "I find you guilty" 2 years and fine of Bt40,000 "

"Excuse me your honour" says Khun Ponwit "I've changed my mind I am Guilty"

"I know I just said that" says the judge

What's the chances of a discount your honour" asks Khun Ponwit?

"50% of with you" asks the Judge

Aye ok says Khun Ponwit

________________________

Thais are lovely people are they not?

I suppose ths ia a case of the police got a complaint and had no choice but act on it.

I doubt if there are many farang or Thais even, who frequent the bars haven't taken a snap or six at one time or another

but to put them up on some website you have to be some low down dirty rat scumball. Only takes one friend or neighbour

of the girls family to se it and she's marked for life. And all the time her mum thought she was working in a high so restaurant.

This tosspot was out to prove what? He's getting laid in Thailand? Pathetic!!!

It's hard on Khun Ponwit but as the poster could be posting from Greenland, Outer Mogolia etc., someone's got to pay the piper.

I think he's been very fairly treated, more than he deserves. After all these pics were up for some time.

[laocowboy2]

Thats good news for him. Why ruin this young mans life by throwing him inside? I love Thailand and I am pleased that they have chosen to recognize this mans potential and given him a second chance. Lets just hope he has the manpower to police his forum more stringently.

This kind of thing will kill off forums and any oportunity for ordinary people to make their views public without them being censored first - of course offensive mateiral should be taken down by the site manager whenever it is reported however if site managers are expectedt to police every post before it is published then the days of free forums like this are numbered. This isnt a gripe at Thailand - half the countries of the world are trying to introduce things like this either at the insistance of people who are paranoid about anything sexual, because governments dont like public criticism or because some big corporate business like sony are trying to get their civil rights enforced by criminal law. All these are going to add to the cost to us of the internet.

I think that is their intention. The powers that be are very scared of the Internet as a medium that people can express their views on freely without censorship. When challenged about the draconian Computer Crimes Act they like to pretend that the main justification is to protect children from pornography. That is why it is very important for them to have prosecutions like this, even though they probably enjoy looking at pornography themselves and couldn't care less about the rights of the girl who was depicted.

I fear that you are correct. The Iranian "election" rumpus showed the potential power of new media - no point in muzzling the press or closing down radio and TV statios if everything can be streamed on the internet. Hence the reactions in China, Myanmar etc. Worryingly now all the censors have to do is mass-post naked women on any site they dislike and use that as an excuse to close it down (and arrest the site owner/managers) while still being able to pretend that they uphold democratic values of free expression and a free press. Does this mean that if someone hacks the Democrat party site and plants porn, they are going to arrest the PM? No wonder we have not heard from Khun Taksin lately - he's at an IT class.

[CockneyGit]

P1ss poor show not being able to view the website in question. Purely for research purposes you understand, we TV users must recognize inappropriate content when we see it and can therefore "police" ourselves in the future..!!

[Thai at Heart]

"The court initially sentenced Pongwit to 2 years and fine of Bt40,000 but commuted the penalties by half after he pleaded guilty"

Am I reading this correctly?

How do you plead Khun Ponwit? Not Guilty

"Ok" says the judge "I find you guilty" 2 years and fine of Bt40,000 "

"Excuse me your honour" says Khun Ponwit "I've changed my mind I am Guilty"

"I know I just said that" says the judge

What's the chances of a discount your honour" asks Khun Ponwit?

"50% of with you" asks the Judge

Aye ok says Khun Ponwit

________________________

Thais are lovely people are they not?

I suppose ths ia a case of the police got a complaint and had no choice but act on it.

I doubt if there are many farang or Thais even, who frequent the bars haven't taken a snap or six at one time or another

but to put them up on some website you have to be some low down dirty rat scumball. Only takes one friend or neighbour

of the girls family to se it and she's marked for life. And all the time her mum thought she was working in a high so restaurant.

This tosspot was out to prove what? He's getting laid in Thailand? Pathetic!!!

It's hard on Khun Ponwit but as the poster could be posting from Greenland, Outer Mogolia etc., someone's got to pay the piper.

I think he's been very fairly treated, more than he deserves. After all these pics were up for some time.

But it doesn't mention if he took them down once he received the complaint.

The system here doesn't seem to note the difference between a publisher and discussion group. Expressing something offensive obviously gets the host not the speaker into trouble. This goes a lot further than offensive comments and is extremely relevant to lese majeste. Just look at the mess the Foreign Journalists are in.

Logically this would mean, that hosting anything offensive even without your knowledge, can land you in jail????

Anyone want to own an ISP or blog in Thailand? I know we are on one now, but the writing is well and truly on the wall I think. Better still, someone should sue all the makers of Web Browsers.

[wotaplonker]

i suspect i may get flamed for my naivety, but if the powers that be in Thailand are so concerned, why havn't forums such as Pattaya Addicts, Secrets, Pattaya live, Barladies etc been shut down, they all contain 000's of images of thai bar girls in sexual scenes, the vast majority posted without the consent of the said ladies, some of the above sites have different 'levels' that basically allow even more harder images and films of ladies posted by 'trusted' members.

It would be very easy for the authorities to check this as they would simply be able to sign up as members, after you have made so many posts you would be elevated to upper levels where you could view the harder stuff and download it as evidence, many of the girls are named and have the names of the gogo bars etc given, hardly rocket science for any official investigation that has some common sense to it!

but there again i may be being naive.

[webfact]

Just woke up from a nightmare

Soon you will need a license to purchase a computer.

Within a 30d period you will be under consideration if you get granted Internet access or not!

Maybe off topic and... just a nightmare

[cmiuc]

why go to the website? Just go to Patpong, Pattaya, more... and see those sex and scenes... LIVE...Infact, probably those same people who threw him in jail own some of those establishments... Every little nook and cranny in this country has some form of sex... why force standards on the net? Answer: coz those corrupted officials don't get Bahts from internet sex stuff... so this man had to pay the price for 'freedom of speech"...

and I want to laugh... "Thai's don't gossip and slander others?"

Kinda "the pot calling the kettle black" isn't it?

freakin hypocrisy!

[stingray]

This is shamefull, the person serving time should be the person who posted not the forum people...

Lets see, if I buy paper and a pen, then use those to write a book that breaks Thai law, is it me or the pen and paper manufactures that go to jail????

Also why stop at the forum owner? What about the owner of the ISP that allowed him to upload the images, the computer manufactor that built the computer he used, the camera company of the camera he used, and so on?

The computer manufactorer and the camera factory is in china, the server maybe in the USA, so they have to go to Interpool with the case (joke).

[endure]

"The court initially sentenced Pongwit to 2 years and fine of Bt40,000 but commuted the penalties by half after he pleaded guilty"

Am I reading this correctly?

How do you plead Khun Ponwit? Not Guilty

"Ok" says the judge "I find you guilty" 2 years and fine of Bt40,000 "

"Excuse me your honour" says Khun Ponwit "I've changed my mind I am Guilty"

"I know I just said that" says the judge

What's the chances of a discount your honour" asks Khun Ponwit?

"50% of with you" asks the Judge

Aye ok says Khun Ponwit

________________________

That's right. A guilty plea in Thailand attracts a 50% discount on your sentence.

[endure]

This is shamefull, the person serving time should be the person who posted not the forum people...

Lets see, if I buy paper and a pen, then use those to write a book that breaks Thai law, is it me or the pen and paper manufactures that go to jail????

It would be you and the publisher of the book.

[mazd2]

Good to see it is not you George....after all the inappropriate comments on the red/vs yellow news in the news section

Thanks for your kind words haha

This is why it's important for george and his crew to police this site to the best of their ability.

But it's not only them that are responsible, It's up to us as well to report anything untoward. The admin and mods cannot be everywhere at any one time.

[phazey]

Most of you are talking codswallop. The website owner definitely has some liability, especially if the picture was allowed to remain for that long, and especially if he left it online after receiving a complaint. And it's highly likely she wasn't aware of its existence on his forum for the first few weeks.

I'll give you the *exact* scenario, as I've faced it many years ago when the Internet in the UK was quite young, and the debate on content on newsgroup servers arose (this group also included Demon and Compuserve for those from the time).

Pretty much the newsgroups were uncensored. And i may add, a hive of questionable content. It was made clear to us (the ISP's operating at the time) that if we made an attempt to clean up the groups, we would also become liable for the entire content - that was 60k plus groups at the time - several million messages a day.

Now, such forums as TV have "moderators" - a group of hardworking individuals who make sure no smutt or questionable content hits the site.

But if it does.....then the site owners are responsible.

Just thought i'd throw that one in.

[mazd2]

This is why it's important for george and his crew to police this site to the best of their ability.

But it's not only them that are responsible, It's up to us as well to report anything untoward. The admin and mods cannot be everywhere at any one time.

I don't like how everybody on first post it called a 'droll' or whatever it is.

And I think it's a good approach from the thai courts to go after the website owners. This makes website owners responsible for what they put in public domain. Why should they not be responible for what is on their public website, when they are the owners/renters of IP address and website?

This will force the owners to stamp out the practice.

Edited July 24, 2009 by mazd2

[Africanteacher]

Website?

[johnwills]

So the moral of this story is to make sure the website is in the name of your wife or girlfriend .

[hunglikea]

Website owner gets suspended jail term sex-scene pictures posted

BANGKOK: -- The owner of a message-board website got a suspended one-year jail term and a fine of Bt20,000 after a user posted sex-scene pictures of a Thai woman on his site.

The Criminal Court found Pongwit Singsun 23, guilty of violations of the Computer-Related Crimes Act for allowing his website to be used to damage another person's reputation.

Public prosecutors charged that the crime took place from October 6 to November 30.

A user posted the sex-scene pictures of a woman in Nakhon Sawan, who alerted police.

The court initially sentenced Pongwit to years and fine of Bt40,000 but commuted the penalties by half after he pleaded guilty.

The court later suspend the one-year jail term and put him on probation for two years during which he must report to probation officials for eight times. He is also required to carry out social service for 48 hours.

-- The Nation 2009-07-24

This cannot be true there is no sex in Nakhon Sawan!

[Thai at Heart]

This is shamefull, the person serving time should be the person who posted not the forum people...

Lets see, if I buy paper and a pen, then use those to write a book that breaks Thai law, is it me or the pen and paper manufactures that go to jail????

It would be you and the publisher of the book.

This is more akin to arresting the print shop owner for allowing someone to use his copy machine.

This judgement basically means that you have to sit and watch your chatroom space/blog 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and despite these specific images obviously being offensive, "judge" what is legally ok or not.

It would be interesting to know the legal situation about statements that appear on here every day to state "so and so (politician's name) is an idiot/crook/thief" I think technically under Thai law it would stand as being defamatory and could land the website in the doo doo if the relevant person wanted to sue.

The internet doesn't fit into the traditional author/publisher relationship and the interpretations being put on it in Thailand show that they don't know how to legally handle it.

[stingray]

Most of you are talking codswallop. The website owner definitely has some liability, especially if the picture was allowed to remain for that long, and especially if he left it online after receiving a complaint. And it's highly likely she wasn't aware of its existence on his forum for the first few weeks.

I'll give you the *exact* scenario, as I've faced it many years ago when the Internet in the UK was quite young, and the debate on content on newsgroup servers arose (this group also included Demon and Compuserve for those from the time).

Pretty much the newsgroups were uncensored. And i may add, a hive of questionable content. It was made clear to us (the ISP's operating at the time) that if we made an attempt to clean up the groups, we would also become liable for the entire content - that was 60k plus groups at the time - several million messages a day.

Now, such forums as TV have "moderators" - a group of hardworking individuals who make sure no smutt or questionable content hits the site.

But if it does.....then the site owners are responsible.

Just thought i'd throw that one in.

So if a grafitty sprayer spray's some bad words on a housewall during the night, the house owner get caught?

[webfact]

Most of you are talking codswallop. The website owner definitely has some liability, especially if the picture was allowed to remain for that long, and especially if he left it online after receiving a complaint. And it's highly likely she wasn't aware of its existence on his forum for the first few weeks.

I'll give you the *exact* scenario, as I've faced it many years ago when the Internet in the UK was quite young, and the debate on content on newsgroup servers arose (this group also included Demon and Compuserve for those from the time).

Pretty much the newsgroups were uncensored. And i may add, a hive of questionable content. It was made clear to us (the ISP's operating at the time) that if we made an attempt to clean up the groups, we would also become liable for the entire content - that was 60k plus groups at the time - several million messages a day.

Now, such forums as TV have "moderators" - a group of hardworking individuals who make sure no smutt or questionable content hits the site.

But if it does.....then the site owners are responsible.

Just thought i'd throw that one in.

So if a grafitty sprayer spray's some bad words on a housewall during the night, the house owner get caught?

TiT and everything can happen... even that scenario!

[sillyfools]

I really think it's time for all site owners, publishers. ISPs and internet users as a whole to come together and put a petition forth to improve the law. Thailand can never be any kind of IT hub with these draconian laws.

The only hub Thailand is, is a hub of confusion, bad legislation and corrupt law enforcement.

[Africanteacher]

Wait till Facebook creator lands on Thai soil. I'm so going to sue his ass.

[animatic]

One has to make the assumtion that the iste own viewed

or was able to view the whole site daily for it ti be intentional.

Even after 2 months sections of sites I have beult were not looked at.

It basically demands that you have 24/7 moderators

all on the same page that SEE every single thing done by others...

No vacations no staff shortages not missing anything.

Or go to jail. Onerous requirements for sure.

[mazd2]

So the moral of this story is to make sure the website is in the name of your wife or girlfriend .

A foolish wife indeed when penalties such as this are handed down.

Edited July 24, 2009 by mazd2

[Africanteacher]

This cannot be true there is no sex in Nakhon Sawan!

Brilliant!

[endure]

Most of you are talking codswallop. The website owner definitely has some liability, especially if the picture was allowed to remain for that long, and especially if he left it online after receiving a complaint. And it's highly likely she wasn't aware of its existence on his forum for the first few weeks.

I'll give you the *exact* scenario, as I've faced it many years ago when the Internet in the UK was quite young, and the debate on content on newsgroup servers arose (this group also included Demon and Compuserve for those from the time).

Pretty much the newsgroups were uncensored. And i may add, a hive of questionable content. It was made clear to us (the ISP's operating at the time) that if we made an attempt to clean up the groups, we would also become liable for the entire content - that was 60k plus groups at the time - several million messages a day.

Then Godfrey v Demon came along. Strange that. He worked in Thailand for a while

[endure]

One has to make the assumtion that the iste own viewed

or was able to view the whole site daily for it ti be intentional.

Even after 2 months sections of sites I have beult were not looked at.

It basically demands that you have 24/7 moderators

all on the same page that SEE every single thing done by others...

No vacations no staff shortages not missing anything.

Or go to jail. Onerous requirements for sure.

That depends on whether a complaint was made to the owner of the site. If they'd been informed about it but had left it online then they should be held jointly liable with the poster.

[sillyfools]

One has to make the assumtion that the iste own viewed

or was able to view the whole site daily for it ti be intentional.

Even after 2 months sections of sites I have beult were not looked at.

It basically demands that you have 24/7 moderators

all on the same page that SEE every single thing done by others...

No vacations no staff shortages not missing anything.

Or go to jail. Onerous requirements for sure.

That depends on whether a complaint was made to the owner of the site. If they'd been informed about it but had left it online then they should be held jointly liable with the poster.

That's what it should be, but is that how the law sees it. We need some clarity on this and clear laws that leave no room for 'interpretation' depending on what/who the subject is.

A lot of top-notch IT services simply cannot even be launched in Thailand because of laws like this. All of those investments will gladly go to other countries in the region that has a clear ICT policy and an ICT ministry that starts to be active in stimulating the economy instead of bringing it further down as is currently the case with 3G and telco number portability.

[bobright]

Thats good news for him. Why ruin this young mans life by throwing him inside? I love Thailand and I am pleased that they have chosen to recognize this mans potential and given him a second chance. Lets just hope he has the manpower to police his forum more stringently.

This kind of thing will kill off forums and any oportunity for ordinary people to make their views public without them being censored first - of course offensive mateiral should be taken down by the site manager whenever it is reported however if site managers are expectedt to police every post before it is published then the days of free forums like this are numbered. This isnt a gripe at Thailand - half the countries of the world are trying to introduce things like this either at the insistance of people who are paranoid about anything sexual, because governments dont like public criticism or because some big corporate business like sony are trying to get their civil rights enforced by criminal law. All these are going to add to the cost to us of the internet.

he should be shackled and never released till he get raped in jail many times . imagine what he is capable of paddling when he is fifty years old. he is probably well connected. that's why the ery light sentence. he is a genius though.