New Cyberbullying Evidence Rules May Go Too Far

An anonymous reader writes "The Malaysian Government has recently passed an amendment to their Evidence Act that has been designed to hold cyber bullies accountable for their malicious tirades on blogs or Facebook Walls. Unfortunately, the amendment has been worded such that 'If your name, photograph or pseudonym appears on any publication depicting yourself as the author, you are deemed to have published the content' and 'If a posting comes from your Internet or phone account, you are deemed to be the publisher unless the contrary is proved.' What these raft of amendments have done is shifted the burden of proof to the accused. One is considered guilty until proven innocent. Even the simple act of posting an offending message on a friend's Facebook Wall could get that friend, and not the original poster, into trouble with this law. Although the amendments were initiated by good intentions, a conspiracist can see how easily this law can be misused to curb dissent in Malaysia."

Comments

Re:Rights? Right.

[History's Coming To]

Indeed, so the solution is to post something defamatory about the king using a picture and the name of one of the politicians or lawlords who passed this bill, then they'll be able to see the obvious flaw in their plan.

Why the difference

[Nerdfest]

I still don't get why people seem to insist on different laws for "cyber" something versus "in real life" something. Bullying is bullying. Threats are threats. Adjust your existing laws accordingly, but they should cover both things the same way.

Basic Overview

[JabberWokky]

For anybody who wants a basic overview of Malay law regarding these matters, there's an issue of the Malayan Law Journal (actually an article supplement) that covers this in language easily understood by the layperson (and it's also in English, to boot). The PDF is located here: http://jeraldgomez.com/pdf/7cd40a1889d4539feffda786372ff33b.pdf and I would point you to page 3 (page 4 of the PDF).

Basically, they are based on English Common Law, and signed the UDHR, but have a history of legislation that allows detention without trial, originally designed to combat communism.