The eLawyer – Exabytes Penang Bloggers & Law Forum 2009 held on 28 june at USM see about 50 people in attendance. Citizen Journalists Natasja, Lilian Tan and Lim were there. Met a number of my blogger friends there like Richard Loh, Romerz, Masterwordsmith. Daniel. Chandra from Bangasa Malaysia Penang (Richard is also a Bangsa Malaysia Penang member) came late, just as the last speaker finished speaking. The last speaker was Mr Stephen Tan Ban Cheng, a journalist turned lawyer. I met him before twice at our Bangsa Malaysia Penang meeting (more than a year ago! and I was pleasantly surprised he can recognise me, even remember my name.
At the registration desk, manned by Exabytes staff, we received a nice orange ‘recycling’ bag,’ which contain a pen, a notebook, 2 desk calendars and of course Exabytes pamphlet announcing its latest promotion.
Eddie Law from eLawyer, started off the forum by welcoming everyone and he gave some background on the forum, informing that a smiliar one was held in KL in March this year. He then proceeded to explain about eLawyer, an online community for lawyers. This was followed by Miss Ooi from Exabytes, who of course talked about her company, especially the services they offered. Oh, Eddie also informed us that the scheduled speaker, Mr Shamsul Jafri Shafie from Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission ACT 1998 (MCMC Act) couldn’t make it. It was a bit of disappointment but never mind, the enthusiasm of the other speakers made up for it.
The first speaker, Mr. Foong Cheng Leong, talked about copyrights and intellectual property laws. It was more or less the same like the talk he had in KL.
I had blog about the KL forum here. Many of us who put up images on our blogs, tend to google for the image, right? After selecting one, we put it on our blog… usually without mentioning credit – that according to Mr Foong infringe copyrights law. Well, I did that all the time… sometimes I put in credit, sometimes I don’t and I notice most bloggers don’t! So to say that we broke the law if we put up images found on the net on our blog, to me is kind of ridiculous. Well… but it is the law. Mr Foong said yes many people did it… it’s just that they are not ‘caught’. It’s like people know it is wrong to break a traffic rule, yet they do it but the police did not see them do it, so they get away with it! Hot-linking an image also infringed on copyrights laws, he said. I used to hot-linked images from Malaysiakini, until one day my web-host told me that a page will load slower with hot-linked images, so I decided to stop doing it!
Apart fromm hot-linking which infringe on copyrights, another type of infringement is ‘framing’. What is framing? Framing is when on your website/blog, you allow the viewer screen to split into multiple independently scrollable sections which may contain text, images, or other frames.
What do you do if someone accused you of infringing copyrights on her/his materials? Of course no knowledge is not defence at all. Well, you can enter into the ‘Fair dealings of Copyrights Acts 1987′. What is fair dealings? It acts for purposes of:
• Non-profit research
• Private study
• Criticism
• Review; or
• Reporting of current events
Fair dealings is subject to the condition that if such use is public, it is accompanied by an acknowledgement of the title of the work and its authorship…
except where the work is in connection with
- the doing of any of such acts for the purposes
- of non-profit research, private study and the
- reporting of current events by means of
- sound recording, film or broadcast
Mr Fong ended his talk by stressing to us that whenever we use an image (or text) from other places, please remember to give credit so as to avoid breaking the copyrights law.
Hmm… I wonder how does one proves that one is the rightful owner of a particular image? Don’t remember he talked about it. Er… maybe he did cover that and I missed it. Ok you looked at all the pictures here… all of them (except the last one) were taken by me, which means i own the copyrights. What if someone took one of this picture and said it is her/his… it is her/he who took the picture? How do I prove if if I have already deleted the picture from the memory card of my digicam?
Before Mr Stephen Tan took over on his ‘Bloggers and Defamation Law’ topic, Mr. Khairul Anuar bin Shaharudin, who acted as moderator during the Q&A later, gave a brief talk about blogging from a lawyer’s point of view. He had blog about it too. Mr Tan’s (oldest of the 3 speakers) talk was very lively and interesting. He was the only speaker who made the audience laughed many times (He has a good sense of humour).
Mr Tan had an advice for bloggers – he said as bloggers, we should only start the questioning process an not try to be funny by provoking. By this, he meant that for example we blog on how the police stop the public from having candle-light vigil, so we question why the police did that when they have no right to stop them and also might mentioned they were arrogant and so on but we should not go on to say all policemen are so free to only do work of stopping vigilers or all police-men are arrogant. (that is ‘trying to be funny’!). He also said the most important thing for a blogger to possess is credibility. If a blogger has good intention, s/he does not have to worry about anything as God will guide her/him. (I found that in his talk he mentioned about God a number of times. Hmm… must be a God-fearing man.)
There are 2 types of defamation, he said – libel, what was written and slander, what was spoken. If someone called you a ‘bastard’, it means s/he is slandering you but you can’t sue the person unless you can prove that you suffer damage/loss as a result of being called a bastard. See, it is not so easy to sue anyone when you feel that what s/he said/wrote is libelous/slanderous.
Mr Tan also mentioned this – what I had in my mind all the time already – “All of you who blog or write are citizen journalist”. (See, anyone can be citizen journalist! It’s a matter of a good one or a bad one or whether you receive training or not). He said that citizen journalist must also adhere to the code of journalism. Balance is very important in journalism according to Mr Tan (apart from credibility as mentioned earlier). We must strive to enquire from both sides in our reporting. (For example, glad to note that CJ Lilian and Jimmy did that on the issue of the eviction notice by the Bishop of Penang to the villagers at the Church of St Francis Xavier, Penang).
Mr Tan said that as citizen journalists, while we pursue balance, we should also pursue truth, and explained to us that there are two kinds of truth – absolute truth and transition truth. Absolute truth… well I’m sure you know what it is (you got to if you are a CJ!). Transition truth? It is something like a truth that can be true today but tomorrow it may not be true. Go figure out!
I agree with Mr Tan when he said that in our writing not only we use words but we images too – image as in conjuring it in your mind, then from the image, the words will flow! This is one good method for getting ideas for your writing. You can picture a scene, then think what to write of the scene.
There was a Q&A sessions but only 4 persons spoke up. My friend, Paula (of Masterwordsmith), asked a lot and very relevant. Chandra asked something not relevant but it was enthusiastically answered and discussed nevertheless – he asked about ISA, what is the condition of the prisoners in ISA detention and so on. There was some discussion about disclaimer and all the lawyers (including participants) agree that it is pointless having a disclaimer in your blog as it is not binding at all. Well we may put it in but it doesn’t mean we will be free of any copyright or defamation laws.
As I had blog about the forum in KL, it seemed that if we were to follow the laws right to the T, I would have broken so many laws while blogging! Well, as they said it is a matter of not being found out. .. and I consoled myself that, that won’t be easy since I’m a relatively unknown, unpopular blogger! Usually the authorities will target more the popular bloggers. But of course this doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be on my guide against these laws and blog without any care in the world. Don’t worry, I know how to take care of myself. 
(note: the last photo – the group photo was taken by an exabytes staff. i’m on far right, 2nd row.
UPDATED: exabytes blog
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