I’m sure most of you needs no introduction to FragrancePrince, and what happened to him, but i’ll do a short summary anyway.

It seems that this blogger made various offensive comments about a certain race in his blog entry, which he later claims
was meant only for the eyes of his close friends. He has since apologized and password protected his blog.

Though there are many verses i could quote, i’m just going to quote this one.

Aiya….stupid MALAYS!! Even if you are a Malay and am reading this… good for you..coz this is my personal blog and i can say what i deem fit…. if u wana defend yourself…. i suggest you arm youself with education and a motor mouth to compete against me.. else dont bother… coz i will bet my life on the line that, should you challenge me in a conversation… you will lose like what a true malay would…. LIKE **** !!!GET LOST!!

Taken from simplyjean’s blog (who happened to did a breakdown of his post), This paragraph shows truly how ignorant of the law he is. No doubt if its really his personal blog and was password protected to begin with, things might not have gotten this far, but sometimes people forget the power of the Internet. A website can have up to several thousand extra hits per day (thanks to sites like tomorrow.sg, and also local forums), and a lot more eyes on it than he’ll ever know.

Did he really expect nothing will happen to him? Especially when his post is so full of hate and offensive material?

In an era where bloggers are Singaporeans alike are fighting for free media, we are constantly reminded that as a society, we’re just not mature enough for it yet.

From Straits Times Interactive:

Sedition Act: Past Cases
# Last month: Ong Kian Cheong, 49, and wife, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 44, charged under Sedition Act and Undesirable Publications Act for allegedly distributing evangelistic publication that cast Prophet Muhammad in negative light
# 2006: 21-year-old accounts assistant given stern warning for putting up offensive cartoon of Jesus on blog
# 2005: 27-year-old man becomes first since 1966 to be jailed - for a month - under the Sedition Act for posting racist comments online. In connected case, 25-year-old given day’s jail and fined maximum $5,000. Later that year, 17-year-old blogger given probation.

In just 3 years, we managed to clock ourselves with no less than 6 people positing offensive comments/articles online.
While one can argue that its a really small percentage, this just proves that we cannot ignore the fact that we do need laws and policing on the Internet.

Though i feel that the new media has their own watchdogs.
Online Communities like ping.sg and forums ensures that anything offensive gets attention. Blog aggregators like Tomorrow.sg or Singapore Daily ensures that anything interesting gets attention.
Lets not forget that it is through the HWZ forums that the first set of critical eyes touched upon the post.

The background for this is simple. Even though we post our views about anything and everything, we do understand how the society works and we do know that constant racial harmony is a scenario that the government has been trying very hard to maintain.

Ultimately, i feel that Singaporeans are simply not ready for a completely free media. Not when people like this shows up every now and then.