Political, religious online media need registration

Correction - published on Tuesday, April 13, 2010

WITH reference to a report on page 1 of April 11 publication titled "Political, religious online media need registration", it should have read "A senior counsel at the Attorney General's Chambers (AGC) yesterday reminded any organisations and persons, including bloggers, involved in discussion of political or religious views relating to the Sultanate, to register themselves with the Media Development Unit at the Ministry of Communications", and not as previously stated.

The error is regretted.

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A SENIOR counsel at the Attorney General's Chambers (AGC) yesterday reminded any organisations and persons, including "bloggers", involved in propagation or even discussion of political or religious views relating to the Sultanate that they must be registered with the AGC.

Senior Counsel Ahmad Jefri Rahman spoke of two broadcasting types of class licences, as part of Internet regulation in Brunei. "Political parties in Brunei Darussalam need to get themselves registered. The other class is where bodies or persons engaged in propagation, promotion or discussion of political or religious issues relating to Brunei Darussalam need to get registered," he said.

Ahmad Jefri yesterday reminded his audience at the public lecture on "Internet Regulation-Fact or Fantasy" at Universiti Brunei Darussalam's (UBD) Institute of Leadership, Innovation and Learning building that any offences in online publishing under these two areas were punishable by law.

According to the AGC website, any offences relating to licencable broadcasting services, where "any person who contravenes or fails to comply with subsection (1) of section 11 is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, a fine not exceeding $200,000 or both, and, in the case of a continuing offence, to a further fine not exceeding $10,000 for every day or part of a day during which the offence continues after conviction".

Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the public lecture, Ahmad Jefri also told The Brunei Times that Internet users should beware of online fraud, namely through scam emails. They should not be "greedy" and succumb to fraud just because they were told, "You won something," he said.

He explained how he recently had received a text message saying he had won a prize. "That is fraud because I did not even join anything," he said.

Ahmad Jefri urged Bruneians not to underestimate the possibility of being a victim of Internet fraud, especially considering the incidence of normal fraud in the Sultanate, such as via text messaging.

During the lecture, Ahmad Jefri explained how information was easily accessible on the Internet and that people should be cautious of exposing themselves to fraud.

For example, he described that a person may visit a website that looks like Facebook, but actually be a fake website only designed to look like the real Facebook home page, and that the fake website might ask the user to key in a password among other private data, stating that such information was for verification purposes, he said.

Ahmad Jefri said this was Internet fraud and advised the public to exercise caution when asked by websites to provide private information.

One of the ways, the senior counsel said, Internet fraud could be avoided was for parents to understand the use of social networking sites.

"Tools such as netnanny and Norton onefamily are ways of allowing parents to keep track of what sites their children are logging on to," he said.

The Brunei Times