In the end, I just don’t like it.
An interesting followup to the YouTube ban in Thailand was today’s (judging by the comments, short-lived) ban of our favorite web2.0-news-churning site Mashable.com for covering the incident and having the “offensive” video, in which Thai king is ridiculed, in one of their articles.
This adds more fuel to the fire of this interesting and never-ending debate.
Some say that Thailand has the full right to uphold their laws and customs, in which offending the king is a crime punishable by prison time (some say 15 years, but I’ve heard of numbers up to 75 years). However, to the westerners the actual video is quite silly. Should I, a guy that lives thousands of miles away from Thailand, measure my every word so that I do not offend their customs? Or any country’s customs, for that matter? I’m sure the mention of eating pork, or having an image of a lady with big cleavage is offensive to some countries. But I do not really live in those countries; I live over here, in Croatia. I have to abide by the laws of my own country. And, for all practical purposes, it’s probably totally impossible for me never to offend anyone in the slightest way.
On the other hand, should we all just stomp on other countries’ customs and laws just because we can? On the Internet, your voice is heard a long way. A silly video of the Thai king may not seem that bad to most people, but how about making fun of the victims of the recent shooting in Virginia? Some things can obviously be classified as going too far, and some things are obviously harmless. But there’s a lot of gray area in between.
So, I propose a simple solution, and one that I live by anyway. The thing is, I just don’t like it. I don’t like the idea of a country sending people to prison because of what they said, or wrote, about one guy, king or not. And I’ll deal with the topic accordingly. This is my site. On the site, I have to abide to the laws of my country and the countries which I directly do business with.
For everything else, I’ll use my own moral compass, thank you very much. On my site, it’s the only thing that makes sense.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Long time reader, first time writer. First off, the whole thing with banning Youtube etc. due to “national insults” is a pretty good indicator of how conservative a country is. Whatever happened to “don’t shoot the messenger”?
Didn’t know you were located in Croatia. Just visited Zagreb two weeks ago. Very nice city!
April 19th, 2007 at 12:26 am
@Ola: nice to have a first reply from a long time reader. I hope you comment more in the future (;.
About conservative countries, well, it’s hard to define a clear line on what’s “too conservative”, that’s why I said I’ll stick to my personal values on this site.
Yes, I’m located here in Croatia, and I’m occasionally reporting with some local startup news, although they’re quite rare. Hope it gets better in the future. As far as Zagreb goes, that’s where I live, and yes, it’s quite nice.