WEB content hosts could get some protection when their users are sued for defamation, following a Government review of existing laws on the subject.
It agreed on Friday with the recommendations of an advisory committee that the law needs to spell out more clearly how liable content hosts are when defamatory remarks appear on their portals and forums.
Currently, Singapore's defamation laws allow victims to go after the person who made the offending remarks, plus others in the 'chain of publication'.
With this ambiguity on the liability of intermediaries, new media businesses tend to play it safe by simply removing the material, at the risk of censoring remarks that could be truthful or legitimate, said the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media (Aims) in its report.
Aims recommended what it called a 'take down, put back' approach to granting content hosts immunity.
Immunity should be subject to the obligation of the intermediaries to take down defamatory content on receiving a credible request from the victim to do so.
However, the authorities could consider a 'put-back regime', where a counter-request could be issued to protect the interests or rights of the one who made the comment in the first place.
In its response to Aims, the Government said such a 'take down, put back' approach has not been tried or enacted as law in other countries, and would require careful study.
It noted that there is no one consistent or standard international approach on this issue.
However, Minister for Information Communication and the Arts Lee Boon Yang concurred with Aims 'on the need for greater legal certainty' on the liability of web content hosts for defamatory postings by users.
