Blogging Miles Around the Metro

The authorities these days seem to have a thing about blocking video-sharing sites. Metacafe is one of the most recent additions since the Youtube incident. Here’s a great post (translated by A.M.) by a friend of mine, Sunit Shrestha on the notion of blocking sites like these:

Everything is changing… Power is no longer in the state’s hands. Blocking YouTube because someone had uploaded a clip insulting His Majesty the King is what is needed to be done in the context of Thai society. The request made by the ICT Ministry to remove the YouTube clip is therefore the right thing to do.

But the era in which the state hold almost totalitarian power is shifting…Even though this scenario sounds familiar, involving familiar censorship methods, I feel like this is the last breath of traditional media censorship. Media censorship is crumbling down, bringing forth new complexities.

YouTube is one of the most popular video file-sharing website with content that ranges from entertainment to educational and beyond. When someone posts a video clip insulting the monarch, it is of course is unacceptable in the context of Thai society.

But foreigners also have a different point of view. The decision-makers for both ICT and YouTube also come from different values and backgrounds. Both don’t understand each other. Thais say this is wrong, but the farangs think it’s the norm – they’ve seen worse done to the English monarchy.

So we use the same old method – if this is the case we block it, so that Thais can’t access it. The key issue of this debate lies here: the fact that the entire site has been banned to censor a few offensive clips, blocking all Thais from the chance to access knowledge in the way other netizens of the world are enjoying.

When there is a situation in which content unacceptable to Thais have been created and the web-owner is non-Thai, which standard will we use to judge what’s right or wrong, whether the site owner should remove the file? What will happen when Thais see the content as wrong, but foreigners see banning the file as suppressing freedom of expression?

The clash between the interests of political, economic, cultural and technological establishments locally and internationally has manifested itself in this seemingly petty issue – the YouTube censorship.

First it was cnn.com, now YouTube. Does this mean that if Google or other search engines bring up offensive material in their search results, they should be blocked as well? If that’s the case, how can Thais ever capitalize on the Web 2.0 wave and the linkage of information and knowledge across the Internet – a cheap source of high quality self-education material?

Let’s exercise our imaginations a bit and suppose that the person who uploaded the clip really intended to wreck our country. If tomorrow, that person, his/her colleagues, or other people outside his circle but with the same intention, dumps those files on every major site, including the local ones that allow user participation, and does this on regular basis, what will we do?

From a traditional point of view, the only way to deal with this is to shut down the local sites and block the foreign ones. There isn’t much else the state can do, if something like that does happen. In the end, the Web is an open platform where there is no centralized control.

With so many sites are clamped down, the obvious side-effect is that the Thais will have no access to self-educational tools or wide-reaching platform to exchange knowledge, opinions, and ideas. Like a monkey with eyes, ears, and mouth covered.

So what’s the solution? I don’t have the exact answer, but I believe it’s for the policy makers to recognize, study, and understand the situation better. If we acknowledge that there is no way of controlling inappropriate content online, then perhaps we focus on a softer approach, like building ‘immunization’ against these types of content.

How do we ensure that people are equipped with the analytical power and moral sense to make their own judgment on content suitability? That is what we should aim for, not meek public acceptance of whatever the state brands as “right” or “wrong”.

We have to acknowledge that the world has moved on, that power is out of the state’s hands. Maybe some day in the future, technology will make it impossible to block websites.

We are already seeing examples of crowd censorship through sites like Wikipedia but we may need to think about how Thai values can exist in cyberspace. How would inappropriate content in Wikipedia be judged for example? If it’s something on Thailand placed in an international context then we may need to be open to others’ perspectives. At the same time, foreigners must also be ready to accept Thai cultural differences. I don’t know how to achieve
this, but the issue needs to be addressed, otherwise the Internet will eventually become a ‘wild west’ where robbers do their dirty work, and the censorship sheriff uses his power in whatever way to control it.

I believe there will be new type of media censorship……a new order is emerging. The internet is driving human interaction like never before, and we need to all actively create this new order together, not just let it be or apply the conservative style of media censorship, which will not work in the new millennium.

Otherwise, the easiest way to make the Thai people’s intelligence lag behind those of other nations’ populations would be to shoot offensive content onto all the popular websites. When the ICT ministry blocks those sites, these troublemakers would congratulate themselves for using the state’s own hands to cover the Thai people’s ears, eyes, and mouths, and rid them of the tools for any learning beyond the classroom walls.

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