New legislation to curb internet libel considered

"Take care with Net libel lawsтАЩ
The Nation, Published on January 03, 2006

Any new legislation to curb slander and rumour-mongering on the Internet must be carefully considered, Prime MinisterтАЩs Office Minister Suranand Vejjajiva said yesterday. Suranand said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had instructed him to look into ways of curbing slander on websites. The Information and Com-munications Technology Minis-try is considering the matter, he said.

The government believes the freewheeling use of slander on the Internet has caused much damage to many people, he added. Using legal procedures to tackle the problem would take time and risk exposing the government to charges of political interference even if there was a legitimate need for it, Suranand said. Recent months have also seen much criticism of the government expressed on the Internet.

At the moment, said Sura-nand, there was no clear legal precedent but the ICT Ministry will see to it that a raft of legislation is proposed aimed at tackling both rumours and slanderous criticism."

I suppose that slander (spoken defamation) is possible on the internet but libel (written defamation) would be more usual.

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the internet is certainly a place that virtually anyone can be libeled without the slanderer having fear of retribution but how they intend to stop it is anyone's guess.

This will be filed in the too hard basket like many of Thailand's problems.

This story has to be considered in the context of Thaksin's practice of taking over or shutting down any media company that dares criticise him. The King's rather pointed comments about taking legal action against individual critics was the cause of Thaksin withdrawing several libel actions in December. Governments have these fantasies from time to time but it's usually bluster. There was a case a couple of years ago where some business tycoon took exception to something published by (I think) the WSJ online and he (being resident in Australia) sued the WSJ even though it had been posted on a US site - and won. So it's possible already to take these sorts of actions; governments like to censor at source before the statement is ever made, however