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Philippine Regulator Wants All Websites to Register with Them?

Where does one draw the line between government regulation and plain meddling? Yuga has this post about some of the NTC’s plans to force websites and blog to register with them. I have been trying to dig for the original Manila Times article but could not find it. So if somebody has a copy please don’t hesitate to send me one.

The National Telecommunication Commission plans to classify Web sites and other data posted on the Internet as a value added service that needs to registered with the government.

In the preliminary hearing of a draft memorandum circular on value added services, Edgardo Cabarrios, NTC director for common carrier and authorization department, said contents of Web sites such as Yahoo could be classified as a value added service in so far as its delivery is concerned.“Telecom is delivery of content. When content is delivered it becomes a telecom service,” Cabarrios said.

This statement is purposely ambiguous. However, It is pretty clear that they want websites to register. By mentioning Yahoo, I guess they even want foreign sites to register. So does that mean ALL websites? Including sites under the sovereignty of another nation? If they claim to only require Philippines sites to register how about sites that are hosted abroad? Where do those lie? How about foreign sites talking about Filipino content? Are these covered too? Don’t tell me they require all websites in the ENTIRE WORLD to register with them? Can they even do it? What will they do if those sites don’t? Will they now implement something like the Great Firewall of China?

If they have so much time on their hands can they please focus on better spectrum management, standardization of carrier interfaces (We are mixing EU, US and a whole lot of other standards. I believe we are pretty dyslexic in this respect) and many other things that are already their responsibility that need more attention. This definitely needs some clarification.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 4:02 am and is filed under Web, Musings and Speculations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Philippine Regulator Wants All Websites to Register with Them?”

  1. Current » Squeeze the virtual turnip Says:
    April 30th, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    […] One answer came out of left field. The Mike Abundo Effect started the ball rolling, by quoting from a Manila Times article (but not linking to the article itself, so that in commenting on the whole thing, It’s hip2b2 has asked for anyone, anyone, to find the original article) whose gist is that a gentleman named Edgardo Cabarrios was quoted as saying that the National Telecommunications Commission wants to classify websites, including blogs, to register with the government, presumably as a prelude to taxing them. Blogs and websites would be considered a value-added service, you see. […]

  2. john marzan Says:
    May 1st, 2007 at 7:30 am

    register my blog, mrs. arroyo? no effin way!

  3. wyuwp Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 1:10 am

    Here is the NTC draft circular. Here are the two (2) questionable clauses:

    1. Messaging services – includes all types of messaging services such as short messaging service (not more than 160 characters), messaging service (more than 160 characters), Multimedia messaging service, unified messaging service, etc.
    2. Information service – includes all types of information delivered to/accessed by the users/subscribers, e.g. road traffic information, financial information, visa application information, etc.
    3. Content and Program service – includes all types of contents delivered to/ accessed by the users/subscribers such as music, ring tones, logos, video clips, etc.

    Technopinoy puts in nicely.

    Yes, there is an “etc.” written in the circular, which just goes to show the laziness in trying to define what these terms actually mean. And because of the vagueness of definition, any information service, application service, and content service can be considered “value added service.” Just providing a comment on the NTC regulation can be considered “information.” Any plugin that you download—for example, a plugin to view the weather—can also be considered an “application service.” Literally anything on a blog or personal webpage can be considered a value added service—RSS feeds, news aggregators, your own personal pictures and videos!

    Aha. Laziness! Something is not right here.

  4. orly andico Says:
    May 4th, 2007 at 7:08 am

    Three Cheers for our Idiotic Government!

    Hurrah!
    Hurrah!
    Hurrah!

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