Despite this, we had a good news story in 'Today' newspaper [1] and an even better op-ed from Clarissa Oon of the Straits Times [2]. Oon had clearly read through the entire proposal before penning her thoughts, and she rightly focussed on the broad principles that the proposals set out.

Indeed, the broad principles were what the group considered top priority. We felt that much that was wrong with current regulation was due to the way it started off on the wrong foot. If you look behind the textual surface of the current rules, you can discern a mindset with these threads:

• The use of the internet should be based on permission granted by the government (thus the various licensing requirements); 
   
• Singapore sovereignty allows the government to control what circulates in digital space here (thus the absurdity of having rules that cannot be effectively enforced given the technological fact of borderlessness); 
   
• The government knows best (thus administrative discretion with not even consultative mechanisms); 
   
• The digital world is full of threats (thus sweeping rules "just in case").

The group of us involved in drafting these proposals decided quite early on that we'd be navigating without a compass if we only addressed the nitty-gritty of the specific rules without critiquing the mindset behind them. Hence, you'd notice we came up with a root-and-branch kind of review. The group was unanimous in what we felt should be the principles that should guide Singapore in our approach to the internet, and to speech generally:

• Clear laws, not administrative discretion; 
   
• Much bigger role for community moderation and private responsibility; 
   
• What laws that remain must be justified by serving legitimate social purposes; 
   
• Recognition of the reality of digital convergence; 
   
• Recognition of the reality of the medium's global borderlessness.

The group was also unanimous in what these principles should mean when it came to regulating political speech. Needless to say, we found none of the existing rules defensible.

On the question of regulating socially-sensitive speech (race, religion and sex), unanimity was elusive, despite our agreeing on first principles. This is not surprising. There is no easy answer when it comes to extending basic principles to the complex reality of real life. Nor do we expect this ever to be fully settled since society is not static. The environment -- technical and social -- changes. Human consciousness changes.

No one can blithely say there should be no rules at all when it comes to social boundaries. That there are willful troublemakers among us should caution us against too utopian a view of human nature and therefore too idealistic our attachment to personal freedom. Thus, while the proposals sketch out where we think the lines should be drawn, they are less detailed, and therefore more open to negotiation than those earlier parts of the proposals that sought to establish proper first principles, and to urge dismantling controls on political speech.

The majority felt that except in extreme scenarios, the state should stay away from regulation of socially-sensitive speech too, leaving it only to community moderation, but a minority thought that a bit too radical.

Nonetheless, when we released our open letter to the Minister for Communication, Information and the Arts, some folks zeroed in on these thornier issues to take potshots at the entire set of proposals. The ninth comment appended to The Online Citizen's story about the open letter, said,

And recommendations are like, allowing sale of obscene books / objects to under-21.

-- comment by Mark, 21 April 2008

Actually, this was putting words in our mouths. The proposals never said anything about under-21s. (And what's with this magic number 21? Why not 16 or 18? The age of consent for heterosexual sex in Singapore is 16, after all.)

I think it is inherently contradictory when people demand freedom of speech for political expression as most netizens do, at the same time that they (only some netizens) cry out for government regulation of other kinds of expression. This conflicted position is as hard to defend as the government's ad hoc jumble of rules.

Beyond criticising that position for inconsistency, can we still justify less regulation of socially-sensitive speech? Yes, we can. 

In the second part of this essay, I am going to argue why even in the fields of race, religion and sex, we should remain true to the first principles, and not so quickly abandon them for fear that our informational cocoon will be punctured by words and pictures we are unaccustomed to.

* * * * *

In dealing with these issues, there are really three questions:

• What are the legitimate social purposes that justify coercive state regulation?
   
• How to strike a balance between personal freedom and such regulation?
   
• How to have local laws for a global medium?

• Is there a compelling state interest in protecting individuals from hearing messages offensive to their racial or religious identity?
   
• Is there a compelling state interest in preventing people from erotic gratification through words, sound and pictures?

My view on both questions is no.

Even if a case can be made for these as social goods, would the only way for these goods to be realised be through the coercive powers of the state? Would individual or collective civic responsibility not be able to achieve most of those goals?

Perhaps voluntary action might not be as cleanly eradicative as state enforcement, but leaving it to voluntary action has countervailing advantages too.

• It is flexible and responsive to changing conditions; 
   
• It promotes maturity among citizens rather than civic and intellectual laziness and dependence on the government. 
   
• It avoids the risk of intrusion-creep, where a government acquires a habit of legislating (or worse -– administratively regulating) more and more parts of citizens' lives.

The majority in the group behind the proposals felt that on balance it would be better to roll back the state and empower the citizen and that is why we called for the scrapping of many laws and rules regulating speech on race, religion and sex, and for encouraging community moderation.

Civic action: The London branch of Anti-Porn UK organised a protest outside the new Playboy store on Oxford Street, London, Oct 2007.

What forms community moderation will take, we leave open. It must necessarily evolve through trial and error, but lest anyone think that all hell will break loose, you only have to examine the experience of other countries that have never had the kinds of internet laws we have here -- including Malaysia, our next door neighbour.

On the whole, we are confident that people will be sensible. Even now, we do not think that the low level of extreme speech relating to race and religion and the relatively low incidence of sexual material on most blogs and forums are due to our regulatory system. They are not. They are mostly due to the standards that blog and forum owners have set for themselves.

Nor can we ignore the third question: How to have local laws for a global medium? The short answer: you can't. It would be as impossible and ultimately foolish as trying to regulate hemlines in Buona Vista district and Buona Vista district alone. There's too much coming and going and the price of isolationism would be laughably high.

As we listed among our broad starting principles, we need to recognise the reality of the technology's borderlessness, rather than strut around like an emperor with no clothes.

The government's stance is that at least the laws and bureaucratic rules will serve to signal social norms -- "ceremonial censorship", a minister has described it with some pride -- but doing so is not without cost either. That cost is the creation of a culture where Singaporeans treat the law as a mere plaything, fatwas that you can ignore. Undermining respect for a critical institution -- the justice system -- cannot be good for us all in the long run.

The futility of local regulation when faced with a global medium can be seen from the fact that the video Fitna, by Geert Wilders, is accessible on the internet, despite it being denounced by our government. This video has been accused of being very one-sided and inflammatory and hurtful to Muslims in general. Perhaps so [3], but my point is, has its availability caused riots in our streets?

We are already living the reality of a digital space that is borderless. Fitna is easily accessible, and there is more porn available from a two-click websearch than any of us have time to watch. The pigeons are among us. Why do we still want to undermine respect for the law by using it as a shaggy scarecrow? 

© Yawning Bread