---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 09:15:12 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Malaysian Netropolis and Net-regs, from The Netly News The Netly News December 9, 1996 http://netlynews.com/ The Malaysian Solution By Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) My first thought when I arrived in Kuala Lumpur was that it was dirty, at least compared to whisper-clean Singapore, where I had just been. Yet the city was fully alive -- not just with hawker stalls but with a newfound sense of optimism. That's because Malaysia, long a sleepy jungle backwater, is carefully preparing an area just south of the capital to be the Asian technology center, a no-taxes-here free trade zone, the place to be for all things cyber. It will be patterned after Penang, an island off Malaysia's northwest coast that's home to one of the largest collections of chip manufacturers in the world. The way Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad describes it, fiber will line the streets of the $8 billion "Multimedia Super Corridor" and dollars will flow into the coffers of Western businesses that settle here. Malaysia is busy crafting a Netropolis. Dr. Tommi Chen, the CEO of asiapac.net, explains the government's plan to me over satay and bowls of chee cheong fun. We're waiting out the monsoon rain in one of the countless Malay-Chinese eateries in Petaling Jaya, a town about 15 miles from the capital, Kuala Lumpur. "This region is exploding," he says. "Everyone is competing to be the information-technology hub. The government is trying to attract the best to create another Silicon Valley." Sun Microsystems, Ernst & Young and Microsoft have already announced plans to shift Asian operations to this tropical city. That influx will doubtless be hastened in February when intellectual property and digital signature laws are set to be introduced. To attract firms, the government is unabashedly pro-business. "I think Malaysia will leapfrog other countries in the region as a business center," Chen says. "The prime minister and the deputy prime minister championed the Internet themselves." Yet just like everywhere else that embraces rapid datafication, a Net connection brings with it overseas ideas and values that alarm authorities in this strict Islamic state, which still refuses to sign the International Declaration of Human Rights and has a police force that can indefinitely detain individuals deemed a threat to national security. In a country where chaste kisses -- a tepid buss on the cheek! -- are chopped out of television broadcasts, what's a poor government censor to do when images from alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pornstar flow through Malaysian cyberspace? The answer may lie in the history books. North of Singapore, south of Thailand, straddling the South China Sea, Malaysia was settled by the British in 1795. The country won its independence in 1957, but an internal Communist uprising quickly destablized the young government. Then, on May 13, 1969, members of a Chinese political party took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur to celebrate a strong showing in a parliamentary election. Malay-Chinese riots flared for four days and hundreds died. The government responded by taking extreme measures to reduce ethnic friction, echoes of which exist today in draconian laws punishing people (such as newspaper editors) who "incite" racial tension. In this atmosphere, Prime Minister Mahathir prospered. Once a critic of autocratic government, he dismantled the formerly independent judiciary after a court threatened his grip on power in 1987. His other censor-happy feats include once banning the Wall Street Journal and the Far East Economic Review. No viable opposition party exists. Lim Guan Eng, an opposition leader, is being tried for sedition. Local newspapers are uniformly pro-government. Issues of Western magazines with articles critical of Mahathir somehow never make it to newsstands. Malaysian netizens have a ready answer for these criticisms of their country. To them, Malaysia may not be ready for the kind of freedoms the West enjoys. "Most Asians see Westerners as being too liberal with too many things," a Chinese manager at a technology firm told me. The country's perception of liberty, I begin to understand, is seen through the lens of communist threats and the May 13 racial riots. With freedom, perhaps, comes instability, uncertainty... chaos. That's why Mahathir is faced with an exquisitely delicate balancing act: providing enough freedom to attract Western companies and American-educated workers accustomed to it, while meeting the demands of powerful Islamic fundamentalists who would put Senator Exon to shame. "The pornography laws exist. They will just extend these laws to the Net," says Chen. The rain has slowed to a light patter. We're almost ready to return to his office, across the street, where a score of 20-somethings work late into the night. He concludes: "Malaysia is Muslim. They have to do it -- they have no choice. They know there is no foolproof control, but they have to do it anyway." My next visit is to the office of Dr. Mohamed Awang Lah, the head of Jaring, the only other licensed and government-approved Internet provider in Malaysia. Like asiapac.net, Jaring is owned by the state. (Three illicit providers, however, apparently exist.) "We block about a hundred web sites, otherwise people complain," Awang Lah tells me. This, then, is the balancing act: "If we are too open, people complain. If we are too closed, people complain." This is an epiphany for me: the Notorious 100, presumably the same web sites blocked by the government of Singapore! It's a token gesture, not too much, not too little. In a lot of ways, it's a far better solution than the U.S. Congress's ham-handed Communications Decency Act, now on the Supreme Court's calendar. "The government will not regulate the Internet," Awang Lah says. "The only part we don't like, that is not acceptable to the culture, to the religion, is pornography... There are also some restrictions on religious content. But there is no intention to regulate the free flow of discussion." (Except for anti-Islam or anti-Mahathir criticisms, I'd wager.) Still, Malaysia seems to follow a pattern of strict laws and lax enforcement. Sure, sexually explicit materials may be banned by law. But just a block from my hotel in downtown Kuala Lumpur, I was able to buy three porn videos -- two American, one Japanese -- for 50 ringgit, or U.S. $7 each, from a sidewalk vendor. Perhaps there's some hope for the Net after all. ###