The long road ahead

I attended the Internet Regulatory Reform Seminar this afternoon at the URA Centre at Maxwell Road.

It was quite a lively forum, with many faces from academia, media and the blogs. The most notable was Cheong Yip Seng, ex-Editor In Chief of SPH and currently head of AIMS – Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society- convened by MICA. He’s been appointed to come up with recommendations to the govt on the regulation of New Media.

You can view the full list of the members of AIMs here: http://www.nrf.gov.sg/nrf/strategic.aspx?id=156

Mr Cheong is an affable and friendly character, to be sure and he was quite supportive of the bloggers’ initiative. This is good to see and know.

Also present were Arun Mahizhnan, deputy director at the Institute of Policy Studies, Cherian George, Tan Tarn How, Alex Au, Martyn See, Bernard Leong, Choo Zheng Xi, Ng Ejay, etc.

I went away feeling that the road ahead is a long one fraught with uncertainties. This is because of the confusing and mixed signals which the govt is sending, especially of late.

For one, statements by the govt are cloudy – such as saying that the govt is looking into how to adopt a “lighter” touch vis a vis New Media, but arresting and charging a blogger for ‘insulting a judge’ just last week, for something he wrote on his blog.

Personally, I feel that the govt does not really know what to do with New Media, especially bloggers. Hence, the year-long feedback and research being conducted by AIMs.

At the end of the day, I am not sure if bloggers will care even if the govt comes up with all sorts of legislation to tame this wild beast called the blogosphere. This has been shown and demonstrated by bloggers in the last general elections, where the govt banned all political films, election advertising, podcasting and so on. Bloggers didn’t care and went ahead and did all these anyway.

I would really like to see the govt grow up. It’s about time that ‘nanny’ took a break, and let ‘the kids’ breathe for once. The apron string is choking ‘the kids’ to death. And any further tightening of the apron string will result in even more severe consequences.

The best way for the govt to handle New Media is to let it move forward on its own. In time, the blogosphere will find its own set of ethics, its own set of community rules and mores.

What the govt should do is to trust Singaporeans. This, really, is the crux of the problem. We have a govt which is obsessed with control, developed over half a century of an all-encompassing power which, at times, it garnered through sheer force.

Such will not be readily accepted by S’poreans anymore.

In short, let the bloggers be. Yes, there will be, from time to time, some who will be insane and irresponsible and spout nonsense. We already have laws for such things. Certainly, we do not need more laws and legislation to choke the life out of what is still an infant blogosphere.

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