More blogger control magic from Perigi Zam Zam

Here's something interesting I read today. Oh well... it's interesting or idiotic, depending on whether your home address has the words "La-La Land" in it.

A top Malaysian minister has proposed a controversial plan to classify bloggers in a bid to contain the information they send on the Internet, a report said Sunday.

Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said bloggers would be labelled professional or non-professional to prevent the misuse of blog sites, since professional bloggers would ensure their web content was based on truth.

How is this proposal any less impossible to implement compared to his previous brainstorm to register bloggers? Wouldn't you have to... ummm, register bloggers first, force them to reveal their 'intentions' and sources, and then only assign them a pro or non-pro label?

What Zam probably doesn't understand is the distinction between Malaysian bloggers and Blogs about Malaysia.

The former are using physical assets in Malaysia (ie. Malaysia ISPs & hosts) but may not be blogging about Malaysia[(n) politics]. For them, any blog regulation (via the local ISPs for eg) is just a big turn off, encouraging them to move their internet activities offshore.

The latter are bloggers who do blog about Malaysia but are using assets that may be based anywhere in the world. And indeed most blogs about Malaysia are hosted by Blogger or Wordpress etc. which are not based in Malaysia... meaning the Malaysian govt has no jurisdiction whatsoever over them (the host) nor the users of that host. Much less be in a position to impose any registration or labelling requirements.

But I guess the last sentence below illustrates all this nonsense perfectly.

Zainuddin did not elaborate how his plan would be implemented.