Singapore Notes, 30 May 2013
Look who's leaping from flood waters into hot water. Cornered by the tsunami of backlash against the proposed news website licensing requirements, Yaacob Ibrahim dismissed it in monetary terms as "just a banker's guarantee", arguing that no upfront payment is involved. The examples they cite as sites affected - Media Corp, Singapore Press Holding and Yahooo! News Singapore - all have deep pockets, but anybody with an IQ higher than the water logged minister knows that there are lots more individually operated websites that fall easily under the technical qualification of a "significant reach exceeding 50,000". Opposition MP Lina Chiam spoke for us when she asked the obvious, "How is a news website to be defined?" Full story
