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Malaysian Cyber Cafe Owners Liable For Patron Behavior

Posted by Soulskill on from the killing-an-industry dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Malaysia's new internet law maybe simply the toughest on the planet. According to the new law which was amended because of protesters the originators of content are those who own, administer, and/or edit websites, blogs, and online forums. This means that a blogger or forum moderator who allows nasty comments against the government on their site can be held liable. An internet café manager is accountable if one of his or her customers sends illegal content online through the store's WiFi. A mobile phone user is the perpetrator if defamatory content is traced back to his or her electronic device. Critics of the new law contend also that a person is considered guilty until proven innocent."

9 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I don't get it... by Cute+Fuzzy+Bunny · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is the point of this kind of shit? Money? The richest countries in the world tend to be the freest. Power? Over what? You are the government, you already have a monopoly on legal force and coercion. The only thing this is going to do is get a lot of people sent to jail that didn't do shit. It makes no sense.

    Think about all the silly laws we have that create an air of uncertainty about the law and opportunities for a timely arrest or fine. It really pisses off the police when they want to slap the bracelets on someone, but there isn't a handy law available that many people break with regularity.

    So this makes it easy to imprison anyone running a cyber cafe whenever they want, because chances are that someone posted something illegal in their cafe in the week or two prior.

    Or its just to put a chill into people who feel relatively anonymous at a cyber cafe.

    The really funny part of this is that in order to remain in compliance, the owner would have to monitor every user or all of their traffic and neither of those is feasible. Thats what I'm sure most are looking for, a cyber cafe reading all the data packets, including breaking encryption, looking for someone bad mouthing a politician. Then they'll be safe...

  2. Re:I don't get it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What if governments realize that the most productive countries are the one's with the highest incarceration rates. They are just doing what they see as a way to catch up to the other productive countries.

  3. Wait... by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How is it that the owner of an internet cafe is responsible for what a user posts, but the cell phone company isn't responsible for subversive use of a mobile phone? This law sounds so knee jerk I'm surprised they didn't dislocate several bones.

    1. Re:Wait... by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The cell phone company is a government monopoly and/or owned by members of the ruling class. Of course they are exempt.

    2. Re:Wait... by tnk1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Making owners of internet choke points responsible for censorship is a very effective proposition for a government that wants maximum effectiveness with minimum resource utilization. If someone used your computers to cause a problem, the government doesn't need to identify that person, all they need to do is come get you if your cafe allowed that on to the internet. That or you can preemptively filter, monitor and control content for the government on your own dime.

      Remember, there are only political/economic reasons to not hold an owner of a cafe responsible. In reality, the banned content is on the owner's computers and being sent from his networks and it is there because he allowed someone to put it there in return for money. If it was a gun of his that was used to shoot someone, I don't think even we would argue that a gun shop owner who failed to do a proper background check could escape liability.

      It's not a very business friendly proposition, and will probably have a serious chilling effect on internet cafes, but if the government cares more about tight control than it does about profits of these businesses, they have just managed to recruit some free and very effective censorship agents.

  4. Re:Malaysia is hopeless... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of many backward countries around the world that don't see any benefit in having a free internet. Sad but true...

    Well, what did you expect from a predominantly Muslim country? Progressive politics?

    Seriously, these people are being told that god expected them to live in the stone age, and they accept that.

    I can't see how anything else could have happened there.

  5. Re:whereas... by characterZer0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Members of Congress took oaths not to do what they do and I do not see any of them getting locked up.

    --
    Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
  6. Re:I don't get it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Unfortunately, without some element of thought control, propaganda, speech-stifling, etc., someone corrupt, power-hungry, and sufficiently powerful will turn the people against you by using thought control and propaganda.

    This is why there are no leaders like you speak of.

  7. Re:most easily influenced by corporate cash by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Considering the majority of the country is islamic, with an increasing swing in islamic extremists? Hardly. I'll bet $20 that if you look at the chief architects of the bill, much like the ones in Thailand(who were directly linked to the monarchy--and have a similar law), these ones have deep links to the extremists. These types of laws exist to stifle dissent, nothing more nothing less, and there have been exceptionally brutal crackdowns in Malaysia on people being critical of muslims and islam.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...