The government is kindly requesting all ‘newscasting’ websites to register. Since it’s a request and not an order, I’m going to go ahead and ignore that for now. The application form is online, but you have to dig for it. There’s no actual link in the announcement.
What they’re asking for is the name of website, admins, editors, journalists and associated IP addresses. This is somewhat odd because a lot of this info you can get from a WHOIS and IP addresses (for users at least) are often shared and constantly changing.
Legally I’m not sure how they can demand a registration, and it seems that they are not, in fact, demanding. I know people that are registering because they have companies and want to cover their ass, but unless this dog has teeth, I’ll assume it doesn’t hunt.
well sometimes bloggers have to stay anonymous. i think this is totally unfair. it’s ok if they register websites, but not good if they want to register bogs like yours and mine
There are so many levels of stupidity to this, its hard to know where to start. The inclusion criteria states: “all the news casting websites operated within or outside Sri Lanka publishing news on Sri Lanka and its citizens.
Tamilnet “operates outside Sri Lanka” and “publishes news on Sri Lanka and its citizens.” Will the Ministry initiate action against Tamilnet (currently based in Norway), with the domain registered in the Switzerland?
Channel 4 “operates outside Sri Lanka” and “publishes news on Sri Lanka and its citizens.”
Un-fecking-believable.
I forgot to add this….
Top secret footage of GoSL’s Mass Media Policy Directive being created for island-wide distribution.
Lololol!
Internet media needs to be held accountable for what they have said. Plain & Simple. What you have here is a bunch of morons writing utter bullshit behind the sacrosanct veil of ‘media freedom’. If the media doesn’t have the ability to regulate & discipline itself an external body should do it.
Is this legislation silly & impotent, probably. But it’s a step in the right direction.
Lolololol! That last sentence is an oxymoron, surely? Dont worry, perhaps they’ll be loaned a digital aphrodisiac from China, to be paid for by future generations, of course.
Has there been a clamour from aggrieved private individuals to beef up the law, or is it more a case of politicians seeking to crush criticism of their corrupt practices?
Who appoints your ‘external body’? What powers do they have? What protections are given to free speech? How can fear of intimidation be eliminated? What appeal mechanisms apply? Who pays for the body? Who can apply to the body for redress? What measures are taken to ensure that it’s not only the rich who can afford to defend themselves? How is the body’s political independence guaranteed?
Free speech is the first and foremost mechanism of the citizen to hold the powerful to account. The downsides are the free expression of idiots and the expensive recourse to defamation actions if wronged.
What law??
It’s wrong to call this a piece of legislation – bad or good.
If you read the Ministry web announcement, it fails to indicate under what legislation it is requesting registration, or undertaking registration.
Even I can announce that I want to register websites, and kindly request everyone to submit their details.
As far as we know no law has been passed in the recent past by Parliament requiring registration.
In order for this request to have any effect, there needs to be an actual law requiring registration or empowering Ministry of Mass Media to do this. No such statute is mentioned. Further, the reference to “respective persons” is comical. Do they mean this is an obligation falling on the website domain owner, on the domain hosting company, or the editor responsible for the web content? None of this is clear. Statutes normally define who the intended parties are. Then even if you don’t register, what is the penalty for non-compliance? There doesn’t appear to be one, and to have a legally enforceable penalty one still has to have supporting legislation. So who cares?
Then there is the extra-territorial nature of the requirement. Forget about Tamilnet. What about the BBC, CNN, Financial Times, Le Monde, etc news websites? These also publish news on Sri Lanka. Are they supposed to register? Technically speaking there must be lakhs of such websites in the world that potentially publish news items on Sri Lanka. If they all register, does the Ministry even have the capacity to process such large numbers of registrations?
This whole exercise only indicates two things: (i) the sorry state of the public service that it allows such badly thought out official announcements to be made – I am not blaming the politicians – but the civil servants who are supposed to advise, and (ii) the general lack of appreciation of individual rights and of the need for due process which makes everyone treat this seriously instead of comically.
nobody’s taking away free speech here. You can say whatever you want to but you’ll be held accountable legally.
Dodo,
Come on, the purpose of this exercise is patently obvious :) SL already has libel and defamation laws which are regularly exercised and enforced. Gota sued the Sunday Leader for defamation [was the case ever settled?] so journalists can already be held to account for what they write. The fact that they aren’t suggests two things:
1. What they write if often (corruption, general wrongdoing etc) true and GoSL would look even worse if the facts were to emerge in open court, or,
2. What they write is often complete rubbish and manufactured and pursuing them through the courts is wasteful and unnecessary.
I think GoSL still don’t understand that the distributed nature of the net makes these idiotic rules completely unenforceable. I know that internet usage in SL is still quite low (around 10%?) and mainly English-based, but that usage will only increase in time and with it, people’s access to info/news which the govt will not be able to restrict.
Mango, defamation laws are only effective if you know who’s making the accusations. anonymous bloggers can pretty much write crap with impunity.
show some respect for the discretion and grey matter of the readers…..
:?