Recently, the ministry of information is extending its power to control on local media outlets, and is drafting a law which will extend the libel, defamation, and ethics rules. And the new legislation will govern the print media to other media platforms, including the internet.
The new draft law will gather until 12 chapters and 67 articles by applying to audio visual broadcasting via the internet and but also to mobile phones. Asked why it applies to mobile it is because there are a lot of mobile phone users listening to the radio, watching the television and sharing texts, sounds and images.
Will the new draft regulation affect internet owned by Cambodian and Cambodian bloggers? If the new draft law is passed, the Cambodian bloggers who used to criticizing the government’s activities will be afraid of publishing the criticized articles. And the law will be used as tool to control and calm down on internet and Cambodian bloggers.
Khieu Kanharith, minister of information, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying that the recent explosion of media outlets outside of print made the law necessary, pointing to the increase in websites in recent years, as well as the growth in television and radio.
At the present, there are so far 9 aerial television channels, 25 radio stations, 60 cable channels, 7 satellite and internet channels, and dozens of newspapers and magazines in Cambodia.
Australian government has already put filter in place. It is that all Australians will be served a “clean” internet feed with websites on a secret blacklist maintained by the communications watchdog blocked, however, the Anti-censorship advocates are also concerned that the secret blacklist of websites to be blocked for all users could be misused or expanded for political reasons.
read: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,24795948-5014239,00.html.
Why are they choosing on regulating this? There are alot of works waiting for them.