13 May 2005

Films Act Related Email

Doing the following after reading MrBrown's and Mr Miyagi's situation with regards reporters.
Hi Steven

Hope this email finds you well.
I spoke to you last year regarding a story on political blogs in Singapore.

This time round, I would like to ask you:
1. Your blog has posted the Singapore Rebel documentary online for download. You said you did not put it up, then how did it get on your site?

2. Have you considered taking it down, given that the film might have violated the Films Act, and your blog might be dragged into it for distributing/showing the film?

I will be grateful if you could respond to my email very soon, by today (May13), as I am writing a feature on the Films Act which will be published tomorrow. I apologise for the rush. Do let me know if you can respond.

Cheers
Name Removed
Correspondent
The Straits Times
Tel: 6319-6319
Did: : 6319-5839
Fax: 6732-0131


And my response was...

Hi Name-Removed

with regards to question 1. 'who' posted it.

I am not responsible for uploading the film to the internet, I have merely linked to it from my site. The url is widely available. It is not actually on my site nor on a server that I host. All I have done is hyper-linked to the documentary.

question 2.

And as I did not upload the film, I am unable to remove the film.

I would be more than willing to answer any further questions regarding this issue.

Steven McDermott

And here is the offending url...

http://www.archive.org/download
/Singaporerebel/SingaporeRebel.WMV



at

12 comments:

  1. Ellipsis5/14/2005 12:16:00 am

    this latest round of misquoting sources by our local journos is like a virus seeding throughout the Internet; in time to come noone will respond to their email queries. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ellipsis5/14/2005 12:19:00 am

    oops. sorry, viruses do not seed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jeffyen5/14/2005 10:37:00 am

    I'm more disturbed that this journalist doesn't know how the Internets work. A simple 'right click, view properties' would have shown that it's hosted somewhere in a server on the Internets...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Agagooga5/14/2005 12:46:00 pm

    Anyway you're not in Singapore. They can't do anything to you under that ridiculous law (right?).

    ReplyDelete
  5. convexset5/14/2005 03:38:00 pm

    .... a journalist who is clueless. I won't blame an old lady from another generation, but this is ignorance that should not characterise a member of the press

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous5/15/2005 09:03:00 pm

    The film act is very broad, it can jail anyone for distribution, production and reproduction of any part of the film.

    Putting a URL here can be interpreted by the police state as distributing the film.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous5/17/2005 03:44:00 pm

    I don't think that is possible. "Distribute" has a technical definition under the Films Act.

    It means to "sell, hire out and supply."

    Legally, the term would be construed to apply to situations where the person is doing it for commercial reasons.

    Steve makes no money from putting up the hyperlink.

    -- Regards,
    Mr SLMJD

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous5/17/2005 03:46:00 pm

    Of course, we couldn't possibly have expected our dear ST journalist to have understood that, could we?

    ReplyDelete
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