Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

I'm a Singaporean and I fucking hate this. In fact, I built getgom.com because our government has decided to ban porn as well.<p>And now.. THIS. Any Singaporean HNers out there, if you're up for it, as a programmer, I'm wanna build something to circumvent this. Holler if you're keen. Cheers.<p>--<p>On another note, this is why whenever people say that Singapore is a fine place to start a business, I say thats probably because you don't "live LIVE" here. It's just another hub that you'll attempt to start up a business, and leave somewhat. Unless you come from a 3rd world/developing nation and come here to build wages. Other than that, I don't know many true blue Singaporeans that's actually happy with the state of things.

Oops, the cool, tax-saving getaway is a fascist dictatorship. Who could have known.

Singapore is like a YouTube sketch of what the Apple App Store would be like, if it were a country.

Singapore isn't exactly huge. What's to stop someone from setting up Wimax in Johor Bahru (just across the border in Malaysia) and broadcasting the signal into Singapore?

Any Singaporeans here? What's preventing you from chatting up the government and ask for free elections? They don't seem that evil to me..?<p>You know, tell them "thanks, you did a great job developing this country, but we would like to take it from here and control our own future...".<p>What would happen? Is there any way to do this that would be successful?

In related news, someone has setup a tumblr blog to parody this move <a href="http://simisaialsolicence.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://simisaialsolicence.tumblr.com/</a>

This does not make much sense. How do you regulate media talking about you? This essentially means that you want to regulate everyone's freedom of speech.<p>"Online news sites that report regularly on issues relating to Singapore and have significant reach among readers here will require an individual license" This is so vague. If everyone on Facebook and Twitter is talking about Singapore (which are not news sites), would FB and Twitter require a license?<p>It says that it does not apply to blogs. So everything here is ok? Again, blogs/news site/video sites are so vague. News is essentially a content type, not a platform type. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/blogs/directory.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/blogs/directory.html</a><p>I think this is unrealistic and is not going work in the long run.

Honestly, with the hate-mongering, the amount of rumours dressed like news on these high-traffic websites flooded with so called keyboard-warriors, I actually welcome something to counter it... however...<p>Unfortunately it will be poorly implemented, and going to look like Chinas firewall.<p>I just wish instead of trying to spend money on silencing most of the bunch of morons who somehow got an audience on lies and rumours (most of the time) - they open up to more transparency and would somehow counter most of the bs articles.<p>They like to call themselves "alternative media" and everyone else are "politically correct corrupt media". Sigh.<p>ps Does anyone remember the series of images comparing George Orwell with someone else regarding the overload of bad/junk information? ds

How do they propose to force licenses on people outside of Singapore unless they have a great wall of china system? I guess since this is on HN they will demand a license?

Satirical article of how the policy came about <a href="http://www.breakfastnetwork.sg/?p=4850" rel="nofollow">http://www.breakfastnetwork.sg/?p=4850</a>

Wrong way to make the front page of hackernews sigh

Not a surprise. Singapore is only two or three shades off of mainland China in controlling its citizens.

Why now?