…. people who truly wish to change things in our young nation gets a chance to go about it…..”

Want to change? Well open up for ALL ISSUES FOR UNRESTRAINED, UNCENSORED AND UNFETTERED debate, THE BEST IDEAS PREVAIL, not the most ruthless and powerful fool’s ideas prevail. Let meritocracy prevails AND NOT IDEOLOGY PREVAILS, don’t you agree???

Why is there fear of ideas challenge – even in cyberspace?????

The paranoia stinks of fear of the truth and the unpalatable.

Opens up and support ideas for the best and not arguing vicariously for “freedom of speech is not a free pass”.

You are arguing in a circus. And now you said..”.people who truly wish to change things in our young nation gets a chance to go about it…..”

Why is this fear of debate OR THE FEAR OD DEBATE IS A SWITCH IN A MOMENT’S FLIMSY THOUGHTS????

reiterating, they may well be making not much sense here but does that equate to them having a real motive, or isn’t it normal for them to make not much sense anyway, especially since they don’t seem to have any feel of the ground?

because if the ground is living freely, there’s no need for top down approach like this. whether it’s advertisement or personal review, a consumer will make his or her choice not just on a single review. cyber space is very big and has its own rules. if the feedback system is great, and information runs as free as wolves under a full moon, lousy products will go down the scale as quickly as false reviewers.

are they aware of such ground up openness or are they not?

my feel is, unfortunately, they are not. i mean, how can they know what ‘cyber openness’ means?

so it makes sense for them to want to implement such guidelines.

i have to emphasize though, i am not in any way concluding anything. just that if the argument that they have a REAL motive is based on that they have no real reason to implement such guidelines, then i say , no they do. reasons as deemed reasonable by their top down minds.

Unless the articles have trespassed certain boundaries I find it pointless to have legislation that demands authors of blogs and podcasts to declare where they get their hosting fees from. What if the blogger is a stomper?

As for amount of punishment, I will reserve my opinion until penalties are announced. I do know this sounds bad as that would mean the law was already passed. Sadly, I do not see Low or Chiam having too much of a say on this. Maybe Dr Chee will have different ideas but he is not in parliament to do anything about it.

As for the people running CASE I see no issue with them. CASE itself is not the issue here when it comes to consumer rights. Its the laws that bind business practices and the laws that dictate what is fair play in the free market that is tying CASE’s limbs all at once. They might as well stick a gag-ball so that CASE is a real gimp. The laws simply do not empower CASE enough to help.

Take the whole “exclusive content” from the pay-TV providers. Nothing in the law states that Starhub have to let Mediacorp get their hands on “Heart of greed” drama (Tang Xin Feng Bao) even after they are done re-airing the entire show once on VV drama. What did they do? They let them air it even though they have a very good arrangement in place with TVB on the supply of drama shows. If only such good faith is shown when football is concerned. (but I digress)

I recall that there was mention of ghost-writers in the ST forums. I even recall once that they appeared on TOC. What about the blogosphere? What if there are ghost-writers that are pro-(insert other parties names here). Instead of writing something because they feel for it, they strive to represent the views of one side that may or may not be representing the whole truth. Do we want to not stand against that for fear of being labelled as a pro-pappy? I fear that by saying this alone I might be labelled as one. There are enough places where political hot air is vented as it is… all I hope now is that “fear-mongering” is not rampant so that people who truly wish to change things in our young nation gets a chance to go about it.

As for Lehman bonds etc you mentioned, they evidence how skimpily naked of consumer protection the laws in this country is in regards to that protection available. The wolf cries of consumer protection by MDA to oppress cyberspace sites and bloggers illuminates the utter hippocrisy of its cheap shots of public concerns.They are DIABOLICAL FAKES OF TRUTH.

As for where TR should register their domicile – that is their decision to make. We are just bloggers on THEIR WEBSITES. And I am inndifferent to what their preference is.

As for freedom of speech – it is not a free pass BUT NEITHER IT IS ONE OF NO PASSAGE (just like a no through road end) IN OPPOSITE JUSTIFICATION OF OPPRESSION. Without minimum free speech, life is like darkness and a mind of no brain merely existing just like a dumb caterpillar on a schrub eating all its leaves until it is completely gone.

The birds in the neighbourhood can see that easily, comes around next and have you for dinner!! Is this the Singapore you want – short lives and miserable?

How the hell can you blame them if they decide to run their servers out from antartica instead of Singapore!

Tell me do you see General Motors, Wall-Mart and McDonalds investing in North Korea?

Do you mean to tell me; you cannot even figure out why that’s so?

If an organization is no good; you dont use another organization to try to get better results – that is a very stupid idea at best and at worst its even dangerous.

What r u saying if CASE is not good; then you go to the MDA; if the MDA is no good; then what do you do? You go the ISD? If the ISD is no good; then maybe we should all call the army to put it right with the barrel of the gun? No! Think lah!

Smart people dont think like that; if CASE is no good; sack the incompetent people and put in smart people and empower them to do a good job. That is what smart people do.

This to you is the smoking gun and to me is not really the case. In the realms of consumer protection yes what we have currently is not even adequate. Really how much good has CASE been for consumers? I struggle to come up with the instances where they have been very useful. Just during the lehman bro bonds stuff they were already not that great.

The details and other things are not even out there and already the glee of this bad thing and that bad thing happening is spreading like wild fire. I can see a tin-foil hat alert when I see one, considering that over on the US side loads of these things keep coming up.

and one more thing, I think if they register in too far flung locations where TR will be deemed not as a proper news-media provider then TR may be labelled as a collection of people with an agenda. I like how TR examines news in different angles and we have a healthy skepticism which I think society at large has but is not on the media arena. I cannot see how another print media company can sustain a business under the hegemony of SPH. The new media does provide an opportunity though. I do believe that the government has realized that they need to engage with people over the net as well and that people like Mr Brown are here to stay.

I personally believe that freedom of speech is not a free pass. Taiwan has more freedom of speech than we do and yet “ming zui”s like Qiu Yi have been sued countless times for defamation as he had been collecting information that for quite a few times have been correct. The large number of talk show guests exercise their freedom with responsibility. Here we got certain topics that are out of bounds and as long as you are expressing opinion without the accusations then things are fine. (To me at least)