I agree the amendment of article 114A was hurriedly done and without giving much thoughts to its side effects.
However, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has agreed for his cabinet to review the controversial law and hopefully appropriate amendment will be made to replace it.
It is only a matter of interpretation. The lawyers in this country are used to the "you are innocent until proven guilty", which in my personal opinion is a misplaced notion. You are always deemed guilty until you proved yourself innocent.
If you are deemed innocent at the time of your arrest, say in a murder case, why do they keep you in prison and bail not allowed. It can only mean they have presumptuously declared you guilty of the crime, otherwise, why the detention before the verdict?
It is still up to you to prove your innocent. If you are truly innocent and you can't prove it, too bad, you may have to go to the gallows or in countries where there is no capital punishment you are condemned to life behind bars.
Miscarriage of justice have sent many innocent men to the gallows. That's why I am against capital punishment. It is an archaic law that have no place in today's civil society and is cruel and irreversible.A verdict sending an innocent man to death is as cruel as murder itself.
Coming back to Article 114A, the legal experts say it is a reversal of "innocent until proven guilty" which they say has become "guilty until proven innocent" unfair to those who are innocent. As I have said in a murder case, it's the same, your are considered guilty the day they charged you.
Under the law Internet users are automatically presumed guilty for any content posted through their registered networks, handheld devices, blogs and web portals.
Saying that providers of free Internet Wi-Fi for public use can be made responsible for any seditious, defamatory, or libelous article online does not hold water. Wi-Fi providers can ask clients to register before allowing them to log in to the service. Most computers have IP address and are traceable if the police do a good police work.
The most dangerous and more difficult to trace are hackers hacking into your website and posting such defamatory article on yours and other websites using your anonymous identity. The endeavour to prove your innocent can be financially draining and the trauma may be too much for those who do not have the will and money to fight back to prove their innocent.
Remember, when cellular phones was first introduced to this country. When it was expensive, there was no problem because only the higher strata of society can afford to buy them. When it starts to become very cheap to own one and every riffraff in town can buy them, all hell broke lose.......it became an instrument with destructive power, which can be used to send nasty and threatening messages to people you don't like and nasty politicians knowing its 'cloak and dagger' potentials used it to spread lies, slandering their political opponents.
In the early days of the cellphone there was no need to register your name if you buy a prepaid SIM card and no one can trace who sent those nasty messages.Now, you have to register to buy a SIM card. The rest is history.
Initially, there were some protests from some morons but majority of the people agree it was the right thing to do.
Now, there are less evils spawning out of the cellphone.
Article 114A is a necessary evil, all it needs is some fine tuning.
