These are the sites the Singapore government dosent want Singaporeans to see... 21st November 1997 Back to Asia Pacific Management News Menu | Asia Business News Portal | Asia Business News Feeds | Asia Pacific Management Forum Lean and Nosey like a Chao Phraya River Rat

With Vietnam announcing Internet access from next month, with the rider that measures will be taken to restrict/ban access to counter cultural and political information, they join China and Singapore to form an unlikely Asia-Pacific trio of countries that actively seek to control access to information on the Internet. All three countries, along with several others in the region, have a history of censoring and banning both foreign publications and strictly controlling local political and social comment in the traditional media. The Internet, though its' potential to assist business development is enormous, nevertheless presents major challenges to countries who depend on censorship of information to maintain "political and social stability". As reinforced by the Country manager for Digital in Kuala Lumpur on the local television program "Captains" last week, Malaysia's MSC, and Singapore's "Intelligent City" strategies/projects, and of course Bill Gates wherever he goes, the Internet is just at the start of causing a major change in the way business, especially global business, is managed. This extends right from the cost savings and convenience of email and teleconferencing, to information gathering on the WWW and several other protocols, and commerical transactions. Banning the Internet alogether puts countries and local business at a major disadvantage in the information age; so control becomes the major issue. Of course, the spirit of legislation on illegal imports such as specific religious writing and other material, and pornography (as in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia) apply to digitally stored information as well as tactile media and objects. The legal details still have to be worked out internationally, but steps are being made to ensure legislation worldwide, in such matters as copyright, for example also extends to digital information. However is the most high profile country to actively restrict access to certain material. Singapore took the ASEAN initiative to develop a regional strategy to control last year with a highly publicised series of meetings organised by the Singaporean minister. All providers in Singapore have to access through proxy servers and firewalls, allowing the Singapore government to ban access to all material that is deemed unsuitable. However, Singapore is fast becoming a global city and leaders are sensitive to global concerns about the censorship of political material. Despite this, the Singapore government is still coy on which sites they have banned. The good news is that in Singapore's case, private attempts to find out this information through unoffical channels (such as testing what sites are accessable through local ISP's), seem to suggest that so far, banned sites seem to be made up exclusively of those with sexual content. One Singapore group is maintaining a list of sites they believe are banned from their own research. The list seems more reflective of a pre-pubescent 16 year old male's bookmark list than one you may expect to be maintained by a political dissident.

© Asian Business Strategy & Street Intelligence Ezine 1997
The views expressed here may not necessarily reflect those of Orient Pacific Century or partners of the Asia Pacific Management Forum

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