Websites like The Malaysian Insider and pornography websites should not be compared with each other as they are completely different things, lawyer Syahredzan Johan says.

"Pornsites and websites like The Malaysian Insider are not the same.

"It will be wrong to lump the two types together," Syahredzan said in a Facebook posting last night.

He was responding to Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak, who yesterday questioned how the ministry would block porn sites if it had to wait for sites to be charged in court first, in reference to the blocking of The Malaysian Insider .

Syahredzan also pointed out that a specific power could be created for the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to block porn sites, but he cautioned that the power must be limited and specific.

Not only that, the lawyer said this power must also be subject to judicial oversight, where MCMC should go to court to obtain an order to block porn sites.

"The court must be satisfied that the website indeed has pornographic content," he said.

Giving the MCMC wide and arbitrary power to block any website it deems 'undesirable' can lead to abuse, he pointed out.

For porn sites, a lower threshold for blocking them may be justified, he conceded.

Offence must first be proven

To block other websites that have purportedly committed an offence under the Communications and Multimedia Act, Syahredzan said, a higher threshold must be set.

"It must be proven first that indeed an offence had been committed.

"Again, I reiterate: as it stands, the MCMC has no powers to arbitrarily block a website for breach of Section 233 of the Act," Syahredzan said.

The Malaysian Insider shut itself down on March 14, about three weeks after the MCMC blocked access to it for an article on Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

Meanwhile, on a separate note, Salleh ( photo ) said his ministry has proposed legal amendments to the Attorney-General's Chambers to require online news portals and blogs to register with the government.

However, Salleh gave his assurance to non-political bloggers that the amendments would not infringe on their rights.

"So we have sent it to the AG to look at the amendments… we are looking at all considerations.

"But you must remember some blogs are not political, they may be involved in fashion, there are many other blogs.

“When registering online newspapers, there must be set criteria… We have to see if it will burden the ordinary citizen, because sometimes they have a blog of their own, we have to take it into consideration,” The Malay Mail Online quoted Salleh as saying.

He explained that this move was not intended to silence dissent but is part of the government's efforts to ensure existing laws keep up with the times, with the Internet npw being a huge part of daily lives.

Putrajaya in the 1990s pledged to leave the Internet uncensored, but has since reneged on that promise, with the MCMC sporadically blocking websites deemed to have undesirable content or to have allegedly violated local laws.