Sense and Sensibility in Blogosphere

There have been several recent reported attempts to curtail the freedom of expression in the Malaysian blogosphere by the powers-that-be. First, the law suits against Jeff Ooi and Rocky, two notable local blog gurus based on the veracity, or the lack thereof, of their blog articles. More recently, there has been a call to register bloggers with the government before they can post their blogs in the Internet.

Putting the merits of the law suits aside, at least the law suits, though committed in the unbounded, but obviously not unmonitored, realm of the cyberspace, are similar in action to libel suits occasioned by words in the conventional printed media. And the aggrieved parties and those charged with rendering grief would get to argue their cases in the ensuing due process.

On the other hand, registering bloggers is at best requiring a permit for publishing. But there’s where the similarity ends. A publishing house has a physical location, a mortar and brick operation, which can be shut down. Even so, the best a government could do is to ban the entry of any offensive publication at its border where it has jurisdiction, but is powerless to act against the publishing house located in foreign soils.

Granted the individual blogger does have a domain name, but his/her blog has no physical location. It stays in the virtual space of the byte world, which in turn resides in the server that is well beyond the reach of a local law enforcement agency.

A blogger can remain anonymous if he/she so chooses, at least to officialdom. So the sheer triviality, the utter frivolity, the total numb-skulled proportion of it all, and the complete impossibility of conducting the registration process just boggle the mind. What useful purpose could possibly come of it, assuming that it can be done, other than a wanton waste of public fund?

Do these people live in a cocoon, oblivious to the change of time that has blitzed them by? Do they realize that worldwide three blogs would surface in a matter of 2 seconds? That in the same space of time, 320 blog articles would be posted?

I’m not saying that deliberate lies are not being propagated through blogosphere. And that bloggers and spin doctors are mutually exclusive avocations. But I believe peer censorship will be more effective in weeding out the untruths, if that’s the primary concern to begin with.

The sheer size of the blogosphere acts as a double-edged sword. On one hand, it seems easy to hide behind the cloak of anonymity and that in itself could be misconstrued as a virtual license, if not an invitation, to commit profanity, innuendoes, unsubstantiated claims, and the like.

On the other hand, the same enormous range of diversity of the blogosphere would also ensure that any falsification will be caught and debunked, if only the powers-that-be would allow this self-cleansing, self-regulating modus operandi to work its magic.

We bloggers and net surfers alike do warrant more than a modicum of intelligence that a close-minded powers-that-be would grudgingly acknowledge.