A US citizen was charged Monday with insulting a Singapore judge in his blog by saying she was "prostituting herself", a court document said.
In the blog, Gopalan Nair criticised a recent legal hearing at which Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, testified in a defamation case they filed against an opposition party.
Nair, 58, is charged with insulting Justice Belinda Ang Saw Ean by saying she was "prostituting herself during the entire proceedings, by being nothing more than an employee of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders," a court document said.
Mr. Nair is charged with being insulting, for saying the kinds of things that are said about politicians everyday here. This goes to show that pols in Singapore must be thin-skinned, which is not a quality that would I would recommend for anyone who is thinking about being a public figure, here or in any other country with a democratic process. Thankfully, as a U.S.-based blogger I have a certain freedom to express my opinions open, freely, and without fear of retribution - as long as they are done in a responsible manner and are not libelous.
But, wait a minute. Is this about to change?
The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.
Read the rest of the story for the details. This isn't the first time news agencies and main-stream journalists have wanted to tighten the ropes around the blogging community. It is well-known how many mainstream journalists feel about the "average joe" blogger.
Journalists have called bloggers:
-- "Jumped-up dunces with PCs"
-- "Barroom loudmouths"
-- "Salivating morons"
-- And "the headless mob"
Interesting, when you consider how many mainstream journalists now have their own blogs. This indicates to me, many of these name-callers feel threatened and resent being held accountable by the citizens' media.
The issue at hand is freedom of speech. I may detest everything said on sites like the Daily Kos and others, but in the grand scheme of things I support their right to exist. If I do not like what a blogger has to say (about anything), I have the right to criticize the contents or just not visit that blog. Journalists and big media have those same rights.
If Joe Blow's blog says something about the NY Times that he feels is true, the NYT has the right to ignore it or take the accusations on publicly. With much greater readership and influence than Joe Blow has, they can get their message out with less effort. Of course once they choose to do this, Joe Blow's blog will get free publicity and he will have a greater audience than ever before. Therefore, many times a news outlet such as this will ignore a posting by Joe Blow, knowing that it will only be read by a hundred or so people.
The point I am making here is not that bloggers have free reign to slander, libel, or use copyrighted material unlawfully whenever they want. They must remain ever mindful of the laws and post their criticisms in a responsible manner. Satire and humor aside, PYY has tried to accomplish this in a meaningful way and it is my hope that I can continue to do this in the future. In fact, I hope all of us can.
Thanks to all that read PYY.
2 comments:
In a nutshell, what AP is saying is, "If you write a blog that criticizes us, you'd better not quote the story you're criticizing, or we'll sick our army of lawyers on you."
They don't want to be held accountable, as you say, LAS. They want, for example, to be able to publish photoshopped pictures without anyone calling them on it. Remember when al-Reuters did that during the Lebanon war? Remember who caught them? That's right - a blog.
I don't know the law as well as Greg (obviously), but when you quote an article and give it proper attribution (and I usually provide a link to the article), I don't see how AP can sue over a copyright infringement.
If they are concerned that I may have a different point of view, and don't happen to like the fact that I'm not a socialist a-hole, we can always meet upon the field of honor. Meanwhile, screw'em.
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