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Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

reuters.com

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Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#31

Post by tikhonj »

sp332 wrote: post #24
mseebach wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, with the hate-mongering, the amount of rumours dressed like news on these high-traffic websites flooded with so called keyboard-warriors, I actually welcome something to counter it... however... I am absolutely certain Orson Welles would not be seen dead in your company (unfortunately, he's not around to complain). Attitudes like yours have been exploited to justify every limitation on the freedom of spee…

Is there no middle ground where we can have political dissent without vicious gossip and other crap newspapers do? After writing I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents, Thomas Jefferson later noted, I deplore... the putrid state into which ou…

There is a very large difference between deploring something and making it illegal. It's completely reasonable to simultaneously believe that something is horrible but that it should also remain legal.

Trying to regulate taste is pointless and would not end well.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#32

Post by revelation »

rayiner wrote: post #30
revelation wrote: post #7

Oops, the cool, tax-saving getaway is a fascist dictatorship. Who could have known.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

China is also our enemy, so you will be hearing lots and lots of their human rights violations. Nobody seems to particularly care about Singapore.

Then we also have the UAE, where women can't drive cars. But they are our friend and supply our oil, so we'll never hear about that. You will even find documentaries on job opportunities in Dubai et al on TV.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#33

Post by sp332 »

mseebach wrote: post #29
sp332 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there no middle ground where we can have political dissent without vicious gossip and other crap newspapers do? After writing I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents, Thomas Jefferson later noted, I deplore... the putrid state into which ou…

Read that page of quotations, the whole one. All the answers are there. Particularly: "Since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press confined to truth needs no other legal restraint. The public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions on a full hearing of all parties, and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty o…

That quote is from 1805, the second one I posted is from 1814, after he'd had 9 years more experience with a free press. Three years after that he wrote:

"From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1816. ME 14:430

In your quote he requires "the press confined to truth". But in the above, he also claims that the press is not confined to truth. Maybe they should have, at least, that much restriction.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#34

Post by javert »

rayiner wrote: post #30
revelation wrote: post #7

Oops, the cool, tax-saving getaway is a fascist dictatorship. Who could have known.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years)

That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception.

China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US (and most other places), and that's why they have seen economic "miracles."

If your argument is, "You don't have to have 100% freedom to have economic prosperity," _that_ is true, but it's not an interesting observation. No country in history has (quite) been a utopia of freedom.

> The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems.

You're treating the "global business community" like it's a "class," in the Marxist sense: a bunch of people who all think alike. In fact, there are just a bunch of individuals.

Most businessmen have similar values and ideas to the rest of the culture. Which is to say, not great, not horrible.

I plan to go into business eventually in some form, and I hope you don't justify punishing _me_ on the basis of your characterization of the "global business community."

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#35

Post by danielweber »

javert wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years) That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception. China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US…

I'm going to ask for some more explanation of how China is more economically free than the US. What are my property rights like?

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#36

Post by xiadz »

rayiner wrote: post #30
revelation wrote: post #7

Oops, the cool, tax-saving getaway is a fascist dictatorship. Who could have known.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

Come to China and see for yourself that although Chinese really improved their life standard, they also really suck at inventing anything new. I think that freedom is a prerequisite for creativity, not necessarily for prosperity in general.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#37

Post by [deleted] »

javert wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years) That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception. China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US…

[deleted]

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#38

Post by ValentineC »

frontfor wrote: post #8
nubela wrote: post #2

I'm a Singaporean and I fucking hate this. In fact, I built getgom.com because our government has decided to ban porn as well. And now.. THIS. Any Singaporean HNers out there, if you're up for it, as a programmer, I'm wanna build something to circumvent this. Holler if you're keen. Cheers. -- On another note, this is why whenever people say that Singapore is a fine place to start a business, I say thats probably beca…

If the regulations are about blocking websites using standard Internet censorship techniques akin to the Great Firewall of China, then it is relatively easy to circumvent (provided that Singapore doesn't implement that at a scale comparable to China). VPN, SSH server in foreign country, proxy, Tor etc should do the job. But if the regulations are about monitoring, reviewing and controlling, say, local news reports be…

> And now.. THIS. Any Singaporean HNers out there, if you're up for it, as a programmer, I'm wanna build something to circumvent this. Holler if you're keen. Cheers.

This might not be possible to circumvent with a 'hack'. What this is, is the digital equivalent to the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act [1] (which is part of the "regulatory framework" for traditional news platforms that is cited in the article). It's a legal/regulatory thing, not a software thing.

Put simply, yes, this is a way for the government to regulate major news organisations that are regularly visited by Singapore IP addresses, and that write Singapore-related news articles at least once a week. (The MDA seems to consider online services regulated under the Broadcasting Act. [2]) So:

(1) they ask these big companies to put up a $50,000 bond; (2) big company's employees may feel the need to self-censor, especially if there's a possibility that they might lose their jobs and much more if they're the ones who write the articles causing big company to lose part of their performance bond; (3) they achieve some degree of control over news and media organisations with an incorporated entity in Singapore, since those are the easiest to regulate.

The way I see it, it's really hard to define what Singapore-related news is, and 50,000 unique IPs is roughly 0.08% of the IPv4 addresses allocated to Singapore [3]. Considering that most consumer internet services here use dynamic IP allocation, it's not a high threshold to hit.

(I'm not a lawyer. I'm also very interested in hearing everyone else's take on this.)

[1] http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;page=...

[2] http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;page=...

[3] data from http://www.nirsoft.net/countryip/sg.html

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#40

Post by rayiner »

javert wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years) That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception. China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US…

You're playing fast and loose with the word "free." Sure, no country in history has ever been a utopia of freedom, but I don't consider any country "free" in any sense of the word (even "1% free") that doesn't have meaningful democracy. Indeed, that's what "freedom" has meant for the better part of the last 300-400 years: political self-determination, not "economic freedom."

I can't look at a map and conceive of living in any country without a functioning democracy, even though such democracies often curtail economic freedom for the greater good. And I think most people feel the same way, deep down. There is a reason the Chinese crawl over themselves to come to America, not the other way around.

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