The Evil That Men Do

Look who's leaping from flood waters into hot water. Cornered by the tsunami of backlash against the proposed news website licensing requirements, Yaacob Ibrahim dismissed it in monetary terms as "just a banker's guarantee", arguing that no upfront payment is involved. The examples they cite as sites affected - Media Corp, Singapore Press Holding and Yahooo! News Singapore - all have deep pockets, but anybody with an IQ higher than the water logged minister knows that there are lots more individually operated websites that fall easily under the technical qualification of a "significant reach exceeding 50,000". Opposition MP Lina Chiam spoke for us when she asked the obvious, "How is a news website to be defined?"

This is not the first time they have insulted our intelligence, and will not be the last. There's good reason the White Paper made use of a 6.9 million figure, not 7.0. Robert M. Schindler, a professor of marketing at the Rutgers School of Business, explained that consumers “perceive a 9-ending price as a round-number price with a small amount given back.” Researchers have also found that prices ending in .99 communicate “low price” to consumers. Someone else put it this way: "I still think you need to be a moron with an IQ of 40 to miss the difference between 1.99 and 2.00." And it must be capricious of the anonymous White Paper authors to imagine that a 100,000 souls will be missed.

In another pathetic attempt to justify their incompetence - some will say outright deceit - MDA quoted the example of an article on the "Innocence of Muslim" video which they asked Google to block. Well, last we heard, Google still obliges if they think their content policy is violated. But it is doubtful they will  act on the nebulous grounds that MDA is proposing. While Google may do no evil, the same cannot be said of MDA, or Yaacob Ibrahim. Latter should learn from the sixth point of the 10-point corporate philosophy of Google which says, "You can make money without doing evil."

Even assuming that the policy makers had intended good - that they actually have an honest bone in their body, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian or other - they should be mindful of the potential harm they are inflicting on a future generation. Recall Marcus Antonius's speech to the crowd of Romans after Caesar was murdered ("Julius Caesar", Act 3, Scene 2): "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."