Helen Clark published her article in relation to the new blogging regulation for Vietnam last Friday. Originally, the blogging regulation was supposed to include all bloggers but has since focused just on bloggers who host blogs within Vietnam.
Anh Hung (Fresco 2.0), Chris Harvey (charvey in Vietnam), and I were interviewed by Helen Clark via telephone. This will be Anh Hung’s second interview. Over a week ago, he appeared in Geoffrey Caines’ SFGate article, Bloggers the new rebels in Vietnam.
It will be interesting to see how the law will be implemented next year. What about blogs not affected by the new Blog Law, will they just be filtered out? As we have seen with Geocities for many years, the Vietnamese government has the capability to filter out websites. It will be relatively easy to filter out ‘controversial’ blogs as well. We will just have to wait and see but as I told two other reporters, I think the Western media are a bigger threat to Vietnam bloggers than the new blog law 🙂
Excerpt of Helen Clark’s article:
Though blogging regulations have been discussed before the issue again came to prominence in November, with reports running in local media that the Ministry of Information and Communications was planning a law which would counteract “incorrect information” about Vietnam.
Read more here -> http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45171
or here -> http://www.google.com/search?&q=Blogging+Boom+Faces+Gov%27t+Blockages+Helen+Clark
Oh yeah, one little mistake. Helen mentioned that I ran Barcamp Saigon. Actually, I just formed it and helped obtain the venue though my network. The Barcamp Saigon organizers ran the event. Want to make sure they get the credit here, not me 🙂
Other Press Reports on the Blog Regulation
Edit 1:
Reuters published their report on the blogging regulation. A bit more negative in tone than Helen Clark’s article. John Ruwitch seemed to just quote online news sources without checking out the facts. As I mentioned earlier, nobody seems concerned about the new blog regulation except the Western media. They are blowing this out of proportion.
Read article here -> Vietnam Bans Submersive Blogs
My understanding of the article is that ISPs will held responsible for blog content. This would be something to be concerned about, no?
@Peter: I think this is the confusion. Several web hosting companies are owned by the ISPs here but not all of them. The web hosting companies, from my understanding, we the one responsible. The error is assuming only ISPs can control this.
If this is the case, then the ISP that has less restrictions on it’s users will gain more subscribers. I can see Viettel, controlled by the military, gaining the market if ISPs are asked to control blogs.