The fine line between what's allowed and what's not

This is dry stuff.  But this is for a good cause. This need to be shared by all in the blog sphere, especially those unable to attend yesterday's Bloghouse Malaysia conference.

One of the most interesting workshop yesterday was moderated by Datuk Zaini Hassan (from Utusan you know the guy who wrote 1melayu 1bumi thing), Irwan Abdul Rahman a.k.a Hassan Skodeng (the guy who get in trouble for his satirical writing on TNB and WWF) and Anirudh Bhati ( anirudhbhati.wordpress) blogger from India.

What's allowed what's not? The first speaker Mr Irwan related his own personal experience with MCMC and the police when he got into trouble when his satarical bloq got cornered by the authority. He was lock up for 2 hours with common criminal while under investigation.

Freedom after the expression? In Malaysia we do have the freedom to express anything we want, but what happen after the freedom was expressed that we need to worry about.

People believe everything online.. Even an obvious lie, and Irwan learn it the hard way as his obvious satarical remarks on Earth hour landed him in court after TNB file a complain with MCMC.

He further point out that Authorities are playing cacth up with changes in the information world and how we communicated with each other. As such there bound to be clashes from time to time with authorities.

Responsible blogging its about you being responsible on what you have written. There is no two way about it. This point was also highlighted by our PM in  his speech, If you write about lies and half truth you have to answer for it one way or the other.

The way yo write and how you write depends on your own set of values, how you were brought up and so on and it will definite be reflected in your writing.

Irwan finish off his talk with hope that Authority in the future would practice responsible prosecution.

The second speaker Mr Anirudh Bhati   also talk about the same issues about  the same issues.
Freedom of speech depends where u are, if you are in the US you can write about anything and everything.


Below are some points he raised.

        -Defamation

        -Anonymity is false sense of security

        -Laws against sedition

        -Write with facts

        -Exaggeration 

        -Repeating rumors without verifying fact

        -Bloggers do not have protection from charges rising from the above issues.


The key word here is that we need to be sensible when we write . Blogging is a verbal behaviour i.e linguisic behaviour through linguistic expression . Again sensibilities must prevail at all times


Looks like i have to continue in part 2 so much to write about this and i'm not done..