December 3, 2006

Disharmony, chaos, and the sin of "close proximity."

Cracking down on the bloggers in Malaysia.

3 comments:

MaoBi said...

Perhaps I could add my two cents worth as a Malaysian blogger (and an inflamatory one at that).

A lot of the time, grand announcements like this serve as a means to keep the noise down. A lot of smoke but very little real fire.

At other times the government fires up a flare like this to see what the response is. It's a pretty silly government which doesn't do much to study laws before they are passed.

So they make laws like the fool who is checking for avalanches. Go ahead and make the grand announcement, look to see who screams and then decide whether to implement.

Most of the implementers are corrupt enough that the laws are only there for the govenrment to selectively impose against the highest profile of cases anyway.

Ann Althouse said...

Maobi: Thanks! Feel free to give us a link to your blog or to other Malaysian blogs that you respect. (But perhaps they're not in English...)

Eli Blake said...

This is however a concern. Since the moves by China to enlist the help of companies like Microsoft and Google to help them track and censor bloggers, any other country issuing such a threat has to be taken seriously since the Chinese model is already in existence.

maobi:

Good luck.