Hello everybody here an interestin intervieuw with the new Thai ICT
minister part of the "interim" government. He makes a number of strange
statements. Basically he admits he will lie to the foreign press, he
says open source is useless and he favours netcensorship! I will put
the quotes underneath here, for the whole article go to:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/15Nov2006_data001.php
I will keep a copy on my pc in case people can not open it.
The quotes:
/Lying to the foreign press:/
"I see no reason to put CAT or TOT in the stock market, but I'm saying
this to a group of Thai journalists. Tomorrow I will be talking to
foreign journalists and I will tell them that CAT and TOT will be put on
the market at a suitable time, which is not now,"
/Open source is useless:
/"On the subject of open source software, he said the current government
plan was a case of the blind leading the blind, as neither the people
who are in charge nor the people in industry seem to know the dangers of
open source software.
"With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it
and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from
it, there will be no development and open source software quickly
becomes outdated," he said."
<>"As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?
Thailand can do good source code without open source, he said."
/Favouring netcensorship:/
<>"The new ICT Minister expressed his belief in censorship and said that
even the most avid freedom of speech advocate would change his mind if
he sees doctored pictures of his daughter's head on a naked body posted
on the Internet.
The ICT Ministry will soon put forward draft Acts to the National
Legislative Assembly on cybercrime and on web sites that are
pornographic or considered lese majeste, allowing officials to arrest,
fine and imprison offenders."
/
/