tradict protections in the 1997 Constitution that
guarantee Thai citizens the rights to express
opinions, to communicate by “lawful” means,
and to access information. 30 The first military
coup in fifteen years, in September 2006, amplified the uncertainty over the legitimacy of government policy, particularly through the declaration of martial law that precipitated claims of
increased filtering. 31 The new military government took controversial and unilateral measures
such as abrogating the Thai Constitution and
banning new political parties, but ONI testing
revealed that the post-coup content targeted for
filtering was generally continuous with the filtering
regime established by former Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra’s government.
Defamation laws
A popular tool for silencing critics in countries
such as Singapore, Malaysia and China, defamation laws and other forms of civil and criminal
liability have begun to be applied to compel independent news sources, bloggers, and others to
remove or retract online content.
In Singapore, defamation suits levy civil liability and heavy damages on independent and
critical voices, from opposition party politicians
to regional publications with domestic circulation. 32 Thai journalists and other critics of former
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s ruling party
had been similarly targeted, in line with a wellestablished precedent for using defamation suits
to silence those fighting corruption. 33 Individuals
perceived as criticizing the King, an act of lèse
majesté, can be found liable under both defamation laws and the criminal code. In Malaysia, the
first defamation suits against bloggers were inaugurated in January 2007, where the New Straits
Times paper and several of its executives sued
Jeff Ooi (www.jeffooi.com) and Ahirudin Attan
(www.rockybru.blogspot.com) simultaneously for
both blog posts and reader comments critical of
their coverage. 34
Implementation of filtering
However, even where legal authority for technical
filtering and other forms of Internet censorship
has been clearly established, filtering remains a
contested practice.
At times an important source of conflict
between users and government is the clumsy
execution of imprecise methods, leading to a
much broader scope of filtering than what was
authorized. This was the case in Pakistan in
February 2006, where a strong public outcry to
“blasphemous” Danish cartoons depicting the
Prophet Muhammad contributed to the blocking
of twelve sites posting the images. The initial
blockage quickly mushroomed into a mandate to
filter all blasphemous content and resulted in the
collateral blocking of the Blogspot domain for
most of 2006, a consequence of the use of IP
blocking. In India, the collateral blocking of Web
sites occurred in response to CERT-IN orders in
August 2003 and July 2006, 35 where ISPs in both
incidents cut off access to parent Web sites
including Google’s blogspot.com, typepad.com,
and Yahoo!’s geocities.com. One exception to
the elastic filtering frequently encountered in
Asian countries is North Korea, where access to
online content is limited to the few dozen Web
sites in Kwangmyong, the nation’s domestic
intranet.
In the implementation of technical filtering,
the content blocked also frequently departs from
pre-established or publicly acknowledged targets. For example, despite its putative focus on
cleansing the Web of “harmful” social content
such as obscenity, 36 the South Korean government uses its authority to define “harmful” content to focus on pro-North Korean or pro-reunification material. ONI testing found very little
blocking of sensitive social content. The variations in filtering, if not the type of content blocked,
between the two state-owned ISPs in Myanmar
were surprising given the government’s lockdown on information and all forms of media.
India’s IT Act, cited as the authority for the creRegional Overviews
159
guarantee Thai citizens the rights to express
opinions, to communicate by “lawful” means,
and to access information. 30 The first military
coup in fifteen years, in September 2006, amplified the uncertainty over the legitimacy of government policy, particularly through the declaration of martial law that precipitated claims of
increased filtering. 31 The new military government took controversial and unilateral measures
such as abrogating the Thai Constitution and
banning new political parties, but ONI testing
revealed that the post-coup content targeted for
filtering was generally continuous with the filtering
regime established by former Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra’s government.
Defamation laws
A popular tool for silencing critics in countries
such as Singapore, Malaysia and China, defamation laws and other forms of civil and criminal
liability have begun to be applied to compel independent news sources, bloggers, and others to
remove or retract online content.
In Singapore, defamation suits levy civil liability and heavy damages on independent and
critical voices, from opposition party politicians
to regional publications with domestic circulation. 32 Thai journalists and other critics of former
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s ruling party
had been similarly targeted, in line with a wellestablished precedent for using defamation suits
to silence those fighting corruption. 33 Individuals
perceived as criticizing the King, an act of lèse
majesté, can be found liable under both defamation laws and the criminal code. In Malaysia, the
first defamation suits against bloggers were inaugurated in January 2007, where the New Straits
Times paper and several of its executives sued
Jeff Ooi (www.jeffooi.com) and Ahirudin Attan
(www.rockybru.blogspot.com) simultaneously for
both blog posts and reader comments critical of
their coverage. 34
Implementation of filtering
However, even where legal authority for technical
filtering and other forms of Internet censorship
has been clearly established, filtering remains a
contested practice.
At times an important source of conflict
between users and government is the clumsy
execution of imprecise methods, leading to a
much broader scope of filtering than what was
authorized. This was the case in Pakistan in
February 2006, where a strong public outcry to
“blasphemous” Danish cartoons depicting the
Prophet Muhammad contributed to the blocking
of twelve sites posting the images. The initial
blockage quickly mushroomed into a mandate to
filter all blasphemous content and resulted in the
collateral blocking of the Blogspot domain for
most of 2006, a consequence of the use of IP
blocking. In India, the collateral blocking of Web
sites occurred in response to CERT-IN orders in
August 2003 and July 2006, 35 where ISPs in both
incidents cut off access to parent Web sites
including Google’s blogspot.com, typepad.com,
and Yahoo!’s geocities.com. One exception to
the elastic filtering frequently encountered in
Asian countries is North Korea, where access to
online content is limited to the few dozen Web
sites in Kwangmyong, the nation’s domestic
intranet.
In the implementation of technical filtering,
the content blocked also frequently departs from
pre-established or publicly acknowledged targets. For example, despite its putative focus on
cleansing the Web of “harmful” social content
such as obscenity, 36 the South Korean government uses its authority to define “harmful” content to focus on pro-North Korean or pro-reunification material. ONI testing found very little
blocking of sensitive social content. The variations in filtering, if not the type of content blocked,
between the two state-owned ISPs in Myanmar
were surprising given the government’s lockdown on information and all forms of media.
India’s IT Act, cited as the authority for the creRegional Overviews
159