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Malaysia’s Highest Court Fined News Portal Half Million for Readers’ Comments
Netizens expressed outrage and donated more than enough money to the website to pay the fine within five hours of the judgment.
The issue of whether online platforms should be held responsible for user-generated content has long been debated in both legal and public forums. And now the Federal Court of Malaysia, the country’s highest judiciary body, has set a precedent to say ‘yes’.
In a landmark judgment where six out of seven judges on the panel ruled in favor of a guilty verdict, local independent news website Malaysiakini was found guilty of ‘contempt of court’ for five comments its readers had left on an article titled, “CJ orders all courts to be fully operational from July 1”.
Verdict or vendetta?
The article was published on June 9, 2020. Local police contacted the news portal on June 12 at 12.45pm to inform them that they were investigating the comments.
At 12.57pm the editorial staff of the news site took down the comments after reviewing it, claiming that as “no readers had reported these comments and as the comments did not carry any of the ‘suspected words’ that Malaysiakini’s filter could detect…”, they…
