ICT has decided to call off the plan to sue YouTube after it received an official letter from Google promise to remove all offended video clips to the Thai monarchy.

Despite many offended clips can still be found on the site, the minister has said to be happy with the apologetic, sincere gesture from Google.

Unfortunately, it seems the scandalous case has led to the build up of the new cyber censorship.

To simplify it, this controversial bill is designed to deal with 2 related issues:

To simplify it, this controversial bill is designed to deal with 2 related issues:

1) It will allow the authority to shutdown the pornographic and anti-monarchy website.

2) The bill also regards the intention to hide, or falsify the IP address as a crime.

IP address is used as identification in cyber world, so basically this bill is saying, if you are not doing anything wrong, then you have no need to hide your identity. (Or in another words, if you attempt to hide your identification, you are being pretty suspicious)

Honestly, my general feeling about this bill is that it sounds pretty much like a knee jerk reaction proposed by some idiotic right wing-politicians with short sighted.

However, I personally am not worried too much about the second part of this bill because it seems genuine IP encryption technology such as Virtual Private Network will remain legal as it is used by most businesses in Thailand.

Plus, there is quite a distinctive line to easily differentiate the attempt to hide the IP address for suspicious reason from the attempt to encrypt IP address for business use.

What seems to be pretty controversial and spark concern over the human right group though, is that it will give too much power to the authority to shut down or block access to any website by simply claiming that it falls under anti-monarchy category.

From what have been heard so far, the bill will only be passed on for His Majesty the King’s endorsement only if the committee can define the “anti-monarchy” in this bill so precisely that it cannot be used as a political tool to limit political freedom of speech.

Chances are the power of this bill will be cut down to ensure that it is only used to limit only child pornographic websites or purely anti-monarchy, and ensure that the same mistake of “6 October 2519” will not be repeated.

Let’s hope that, Thailand will remain its stand of pursuing the democracy system, which will stop telling Thai people what is right and wrong, and have more faith to let them think for themselves instead.

I genuinely hope that is more like ideal world that will probably never happen anyway, but let’s hope..