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Malaysian Government Wants Internet Filtering

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-fashionable-these-days dept.

adewolf tips news that the government of Malaysia is looking into the development of an internet filtering program. According to a Reuters report, "A vibrant Internet culture has contributed to political challenges facing the government, which tightly controls mainstream media and has used sedition laws and imprisonment without trial to prosecute a blogger." The Malaysian government insists that such a filter would only be used to block pornography, though critics of the plan expect it would be wielded as a political tool, censoring websites that are critical of the current administration. "An industry source says the government could impose the filters late this year or in 2010, coinciding with the rollout of a high-speed broadband network run by Telekom Malaysia. Malaysia aims to increase broadband penetration to half of all homes by 2010 as part of its drive to boost economic efficiency."

13 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ipv6 by ScytheBlade1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Erm, there is no mandatory encryption with IPv6.

    The change from v4 that you're thinking of is IPSEC being a first class citizen to the protocol, as opposed to a backported second class citizen in the networking world.

    Not that it doesn't work fine with v4, mind you.

  2. How does that work, again? by NewbieProgrammerMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Malaysia aims to increase broadband penetration to half of all homes by 2010 as part of its drive to boost economic efficiency.

    Yeah, I'm sure you'll see a lot of economic efficiency coming from the introduction of an "internet" that's so crippled that you can't find any criticism of the government on it.

    --
    [b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
    1. Re:How does that work, again? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As much as I'd like to agree with you, it seems to be working out OK (for the moment at least) for China.

      The world would be a much nicer place if it were true; but there seems to be room, with the right techniques, to capture a fair slice of the benefits(quite possibly not all; but a decent portion) with comparatively little of the freedom.

    2. Re:How does that work, again? by BitZtream · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I love how apparently no one can communicate without the Internet.

      You realize people dealt with this soft of problem before the Internet existed right? People actually ... talked to each other ... rather than twiting it up or facebooking.

      Contrary to popular belief, the Internet is not a requirement to life, you can live without it and do pretty much everything you need to do.

      I don't want filtering either, but you're just pushing your own political agenda rather than actually caring about the problem.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    3. Re:How does that work, again? by raju1kabir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You realize people dealt with this soft of problem before the Internet existed right? People actually ... talked to each other ... rather than twiting it up or facebooking.

      People can talk to the people they know, and the people in their community, sure. But that is very limiting:

      • No possibility for anonymity
      • Limited number of viewpoints
      • Limited access to externally verifiable information

      The internet has transformed politics in Malaysia, by bringing people all over the country together based on their shared views rather than based solely on whom they happened to live nearby. It's allowed people to have open, frank discussions that previously they would only be able to have with their closest confidants. It's allowed facts and evidence to be brought to general public attention which would previously have been squelched by the BN-owned mass media.

      Of course humans can survive without the internet. But in my mind there is no question that it has enabled a transformative level of communication which we are only beginning to see the full impact of.

      --
      "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
  3. Re:Religion and Internet Filtering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems to me the "common thread" between all 6 of the countries you mention is their governments fear dissent. There are plenty of Muslim and Confucian majority countries that do not censor the Internet.

  4. Re:Religion and Internet Filtering by basementman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the reason they don't censor the internet in Russia is because the government knows it would get it's ass handed to them by the good citizens of the internet if they did.

    --
    A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
  5. Re:Religion and Internet Filtering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You must admit, though, that religion provides a convenient and inexplicably politically-correct excuse for fostering repressive government and xenophobic belligerence.

    For example, we should thank The Family and those like them for the downfall of America.

    Yours in trolling,

    --Ethanol-fueled

    captcha: descends

  6. To all countries invovled in censorship... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Kiss my ass.

  7. Re:Religion and Internet Filtering by moon3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It has nothing to do with religion. The bigger the country the stakes for government (of any kind) and the involved individuals are higher, the exposure for them is higher, so the urge for control and filtering comes along with it.

  8. Re:Religion and Internet Filtering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Or just that porno is not acceptable to some cultures.

  9. Re:Religion and Internet Filtering by gullevek · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Erm, Germany is doing this too. Every country will do that. With the reason of Porn, Child Porn or whatever. But at the end it is just to protect the aristocracy, the ruling class, the dictators we always vote for.

    --
    "Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
  10. Re:There's a simple solution to this by raju1kabir · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We wouldn't know; that movie was banned in Malaysia.

    Of course the government has no problem with the endless movies that depict assassinations of other heads of state, but even a joke about Malaysia and the petulant UMNO children pulling the strings behind the censor's office go haywire. Ironically, in the process, they make Malaysia into more of a joke than ever.

    --
    "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS