By The Online Citizen has submitted its registration form to Infocomm Media Development Authority – IMDA at 3pm, Friday (23 Feb) in response to its demand to register with the agency to declare all source of fundings and to have the directors and editors to make statuary declaration of their responsibility to the upkeep of the site and content.
IMDA has earlier sent a letter to TOC stating that the website is deemed to be providing a programme for the promotion or discussion of political issues relating to Singapore.
If TOC does not register the site with IMDA, it will take action to cancel the class license of the website.
Despite the heavy responsibility in relation to the declaration and noose tied around its neck, TOC decided to submit the registration so as to continue operations in Singapore.
For those who are spurring TOC to operate out of Singapore, it doesn’t work that way. Singapore’s broad media law allows IMDA to bar the IP address of the website for anyone to access from Singapore and TOC can no longer cover live events in Singapore.
To date, IMDA has registered the corporate entities for the provision, management and/or operation of the following websites under the Broadcasting (Class Licence) Notification – i.e. The Independent Singapore, Mothership.sg, The Online Citizen, Six-Six News (closed), Inconvenient Questions (closed) and The Middle Ground (closed).