Singapore Censors the Internet

In My Humble Opinion
1

In news announced last night (read here) the Singapore Media Development Authority is trying to regulate news sites on the internet.

If the site reports 1 Singapore news article per week, and has 50,000 unique visitors from Singapore per month it will have to be “licensed”, pay a $50,000 performance deposit and will be subject to having content monitored and “approved” by the authority.

Not quite sure where this belongs, but I’ll pop it here first…

What I’d like to know, what kind of drugs do they put in the water at MDA if they think that this is workable?

How are they going to impose this on sites registered out of Singapore?

It also seems to be targeted at some very specific “anti-establishment” sites -

And a $50k deposit? Purely insane.

2

Can one really isolate a country from the greater internet? With satellite links, it seems like it would require counter-electronic warfare levels of effort to keep people from viewing pages from around the world. I suppose if one could control the peoples access to equipment, it could be done to a limited degree. But I have no clue, really.

3

So is The Dope exempt? But seriously, it’s surprising when countries think they can do this. Australia wanted to too - have they given up yet?

4

For context, internet censorship by country: here.