Filing a Complaint with the MCMC

Posting offending messages on the internet is longer a trivial thing nowadays. Many internet users are now aware of their remedy when facing with offensive messages on the internet.

Bank Employee Charged With Posting Obscene Blog Title

KUALA LUMPUR, July 6 (Bernama) — A former EON Bank Berhad employee pleaded not guilty in the Sessions Court here Monday over the posting of an obscene blog title to embarrass his former boss.

Seah Boon Khim, 26, was accused of posting a vile and indecent material on a blog site http://www.xanga.com/hokongchan67 with intent to annoy Eon Bank Internal Audit Department head Ho Kong Chan at 1.33pm on Aug 13 2007 at 19 A-26-3 Level 6, UOA Centre 19, Jalan Pinang here.

He was charged under Section 233(1)(a) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 which carries fine up to RM50,000 or jail up to one year or both.

In mitigation, Seah, who has since resigned from his job, said he had apologised to Ho and admitted that he did not realised the gravity of his action and he should not have done it.

Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission prosecuting officer Raja Iskandar Zulkharnian Raja Abdul Malek appeared for the prosecution.

Judge Zaki Abdul Wahab postponed sentencing until tomorrow.

— BERNAMA

Mr Seah was reportedly fined RM8,000.

Section 211 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998:

211. Prohibition on provision of offensive content.

(1) No content applications service provider, or other person using a content applications service, shall provide content which is indecent, obscene, false, menacing, or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person.

(2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) commits an offence and shall, on conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding fifty thousand ringgit or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or to both and shall also be liable to a further fine of one thousand ringgit for every day or part of a day during which the offence is continued after conviction.

This section would also apply to offensive comments posted by readers of a blog. We bloggers now have an avenue to complain without incurring substantial legal fees. Watch out internet trolls!

I thought it would be beneficial to set out a sample complaint for the benefit of other bloggers. This may be in a form of a letter.

On [time on date e.g 12:30am GMT +8 on 31 February 2009], one [person e.g. bb_matik] made an [choose one or more: indecent/obscene/false/menacing/offensive] posting on my blog, [your blog address e.g. www.xes.cx], at the URL [URL which contains the said posting e.g. www.xes.cx/123.htm] using the IP address at [IP address e.g 192.168.1.1]. [Optional. Please note that there is 1000 characters limited] For ease of reference, I reproduce the offending posting:

[reproduce offending message here. example can be seen below:

frank is gay but xes is just impersonating to help frank to rid of his gay partner. frank loves xes but xes love women. make no mistake about that.]

The above posting is [choose one or more: indecent/obscene/false/menacing/offensive] and I verily believe that the said posting was made with [choose one or more: intent to annoy/ abuse/threaten/harass] me. The said posting has caused [choose one: annoyance/fear/embarrassment] to me.

Thus, I hope that the MCMC will take action against the person who posted the said posting.