Malaysia's score for Internet freedom has improved despite a decline in overall global rankings, said Freedom House in a report today.

The Freedom On The Net 2014 report stated that Malaysia's position has improved by two points (42), but was still poorer than neighbours Singapore (40) and Philippines (27), where a higher index implies better freedom.

The report, which studied the Internet freedom development in 65 countries took into account the obstacles to access, limits on content and violation of user rights to determine the index.

Among the key developments affecting Internet freedom here that the report cited for the past year included Seputeh MP Teresa Kok's ( right ) charge for sedition over a satirical video and the detaining of two bloggers Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee for spreading religious disharmony on Facebook .

The government’s move of denying online news media portals like Malaysiakini and FZ Daily print licences were also considered in the report's assessment of Malaysia's index.

The study, carried out from May 2013 to May 2014 by the US-based NGO, rated Internet freedom in the countries according to the index points that they score.

Countries with the lowest score in the scale of hundred are considered free, while countries with higher scores are considered not free.

The 13-page part of the report dedicated to Malaysia, stated that despite Putrajaya's objection to the Internet, the Internet freedom here has grown in other ways.

“Citizens continued to communicate voraciously via social networks in 2014. News websites, once outliers, are now an indispensable part of Malaysia’s information landscape, despite government attempts to deny them access to the print market by refusing to grant licenses.

“Political gatherings and rallies held since the May 2013 elections saw significantly more coverage online than in the mainstream media, furthering a trend begun in 2011 and 2012.

"But they have yet to transform the government’s contradictory approach to the Internet into a fully-free environment.”

The report on Malaysia was divided into three sections (obstacles to access, limits on content, violations of user rights) and several issues that were touched are as follows:

Obstacles to Access

- Malaysia’s Internet penetration measured at 67 percent in 2013 falls short of the official pledge in 2012 to increase it to 80 percent.

- Regulation of the Internet is under the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) which is under the Information, Communications and Culture Ministry. The 1998 Communication and Multimedia Act (CMA) “gives the information minister a range of powers including licensing ownership and operation of network facilities”.

- Local authorities have introduced restrictions on cybercafés to curb illegal online activities which have reduced cybercafés.

Limits on Content

- Many official attempts to restrict content including the inaccessible BBC report on Prime Minister Najib being censored .

- Many government-linked companies and public universities restrict access to websites perceived as politically active, such as  Malaysiakini.com .

- Authorities also make administrative requests to content and service providers to restrict information. The MCMC can instruct websites to remove content, including some perceived as critical of the government.

- Combative political reporting online may have caused the government or its supporters to try and censor a handful of news websites in the lead-up to 2013 elections.

- Despite the interventions, online tools have been effective for political mobilization and exposing the government’s grip on traditional media.

Violations of User Rights

- Legal harassment remained a primary means for the authorities to intimidate internet users in 2014 with bloggers and increasingly, social media users investigated and sometimes charged for online activity.

- Use of sedition (Sedition Act 1948) and official secrets charges (Official Secrets Act 1972) to harass bloggers and internet users.

- Politically motivated defamation suits seeking damages disproportionate to the offence have become another threat to online expression.

- A graver threat to independent online news outlets and some opposition-related websites is distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which force sites to crash sites by overloading the host server with requests for content, often at moments of political importance.

The full 'Freedom On The Net 2014' report can be read here .