Singapore Democrats

Cowards!!!!!!

My despise towards LKY is growing every second he cling on to power refusing to let go, like a parasite feeding on us Singaporeans. FU man go to hell

It is pathetic just how he is clinging to power!

Let us all pray he will meet his maker this coming 7th Mth!


The sight of him disgust me. If he had retired in the 80s, I think all of us will still respect him for his past contribution. Now it is just pure hatred!

Congratulations! The enemy is running scared.

I can view the video in Germany! maybe it is only blocked in SG? I really dislike local filtering! There should be a way to fool websites about your location!

Seelan Palay, you must be proud that your movie ONUL is causing sleepless nights to LKY and/or his son. So much so, they must have gone to some extreme to get Youtube to obliterate it. What kind of threat did they use, I wonder? Again, could it have been a payoff?
Whatever, ONUL hurts them.....the truth always hurts dictators who have to hide under a screen to continue ruling/bullying their people.

At first I thought : horror! GIC has bought over Youtube! Or that Youtube has crossed over to the "Darkside".

But then I've just checked Youtube and the videos are working fine.

The link is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tafv4ft4bQM.

Perhaps the pronouncement over the death of freedom of expression is a tad too premature. And yes, I am in Singapore.

It seems load fine everywhere else, Malaysia, HK, Indonesia and Australia. It has to be a local block in singapore.

Hey, Palay, perhaps its time to go up close and personal. I've always wonder if anybody did investigation into the personal side of the Lee family. Did Lee Kwan Yew really insulted Lee Hsien Loong's first wife regarding his albino child? causing her to commit sucide? Somebody dig into the numerous rumours about the darker side of the family? We love to hear gossips ... :)

Who care about the truth? its the juicy rumours that sell! Keep it flowing!

Well, pehaps its time to move this publiction to mobile phones, bluetooth is far more viral than the internet.

you can get all the tools on the internet too.

Good luck

Somebody please write to youtube for an explaination on why the error message. Seelan, if thare is a copyright infrindgement, please get them to explain. Maybe it was the use of certain background music titles (check with [b]US copyright law[/b], since it's hosted there) you can't be sure. then make the necessary amendments before reuploading.

Failing that, write to US media cc office of US President, HRW etc.

Countries such as Iran and China have failed to have their acts censoredby youtube, why should S'pore be an exception?

It could well be just a technical or pending copyright issue at Youtube's end and yet conspiracy theories abound over this. It's very typical of people who believe what they want to believe, to the extent of believing that Youtube has somehow been threatened into doing this.

As to whether the "enemy is running scared", let's not kid ourselves. Put yourself in their shoes - there is more harm to appear intimidated by a video done by a nondescript person with a political agenda. The government knows there are characters around who, on the finickiest reasons will raise hue and cry over the lost of freedom of expressions in the hope that the international media will pick it up. I don't think they are that gullible to offer you the bait to hook themselves. This article is precisely that.

We see comments such as "Seelan Palay, you must be proud that your movie ONUL is causing sleepless nights to LKY and/or his son." If there is indeed some pride and causing the government to lose sleep was the intent, then I would consider the pride very misplaced. I hope Seelan have many good purposes in what he does rather than spend time rejoicing whenever the other party reacts. Let's be more mature.

Hey relax everyone.

Though it was nice that the youtube video had a hitcount that was good to monitor, it being taken off youtube is no big deal to me.

Its still available for streaming and download anyway at [url]http://one-nation-under-lee.org[/url]

BryanT,

Your second point is only valid if you assume that the PAP* is well-coordinated (or monolithic) and always act rationally. Our recent experiences do not agree with you. Their tendency, as we have observed over the years, is to overreact.

My protest with Seelan outside Ministry of Manpower is one case in point. Seelan's recent 'interview' by the police on the production of ONUL is another. What logical reason is there to drive ONUL's viewership up by putting both the creator and the film into the spotlight again?

This is not to say PAP does not learn from past mistakes. In some cases, they do. See for example the replacement of uniformed police officers with plainclothes ones over the course of the 3-day IMF/WB protest in 2006 to soften their authoritarian image; then the consequent use of plainclothes female arresting officers to stop the 4-man silent protest outside Istana and the 18 TBTers outside Funan.

But faced with fresh challenges, they invariably respond disproportionately. Perhaps for fear of losing control. It would appear that the PAP prefers to act conservatively: stop the activity, then think.

This all makes sense if one realises the cumbersome nature of PAP's hierarchical command structure.

Now back to your main point about the conspiratorial theories. I agree with you, but to a very limited extent. There is a certain danger in settling into a mode of thought where every reaction, no matter how miniscule, from the authorities is taken to be effecting change. The PAP would be quite happy to contain you that way.

So, it is clear that there is indeed a violation of copyrights. There is no dispute over this. What is not so obvious is PAP's power over YouTube. The article suggests PAP may be influential enough to coerce YouTube into removing videos at its command. This I find implausible. Even the US government would be hard pressed to perform such blatant censorship.

More likely, YouTube has thus far been unaware of the use of copyrighted music in ONUL and/or the scope of fair use under Singaporean copyright law. From what I understand, YouTube employs a combination of digital fingerprinting (to identify copyrighted works) and claims from copyright owners to discover and determine violations. This is where the causes get a bit tricky to disentangle:

Digital fingerprinting requires a database of known copyrighted samples to match against. YouTube, I should think, relies on copyright owners to supply these samples. Now since ONUL was only recently removed, we might conclude that the automated system never picked it up because the copyrighted music in question was never in the fingerprint database; or that the system did, but YouTube was unsure of its legal status in Singapore. I think we can safely rule the latter out.

So if the fingerprinting system failed to discover the video, there remains only one possibility. Someone must have tipped YouTube off. But who? It could be a representative of Universal Music Group (UMG), acting independently or under instruction from PAP; or a PAP-aligned vigilante, critical of the video, got motivated enough to inform either UMG or PAP about the violation; or PAP (MDA included) itself. Then of course, if one is willing to believe in coincidences, then by sheer chance, the fingerprint database was recently updated, leading to an eventual discovery of ONUL and its subsequent removal.

Now which is it? Well, that's for everyone to speculate. SDP's guess is not entirely unreasonable.

* For simplicity's sake, without risk of incurring length due to academic pedantry, I use 'PAP' in a very broad sense, encompassing the party, its supporters, and all state instruments and institutions.

Viewable in Australia, wierd occurances eh?

Oh no, now even more people will even pay to watch it.

"If there is indeed some pride and causing the government to lose sleep was the intent, then I would consider the pride very misplaced"

Tell that to the nepotistic regime leader, LKY and his son of PAP. They have made countless Singaporean sleepless. In fact many has chosen suicide. Gone.

Nothing better to do!

Anna, suicide sounds like a very drastic recourse to nepotistic regime leaders, and very ineffective as well. Also, suicide tends to leave a untidy mess if people resort to the test of gravity across ledges in their HDB blocks. It only serves to perk up business for Tong Aik*.

Hence I do not recommend suicide and hope out opportunist do not mention it here, in case it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Mind you, our nation's birthrate is already low. Don't let more suicide be the reason for more foreigners to be brought in.

Anna, as to sleeplessness, a cup of milo does go some way to help drive one to sleep. My solution is a good book. You may want to try that too.

Note: Tong Aik is the official corpse removal contractor engaged by the police.

"Oh no, now even more people will even pay to watch it"

I have (yet) another conspiracy theory. Could it be that someone has removed it so that he can sell pirated versions of the video? Seelan, is it you?

Or, the government is waiting to nap whoever produces pirated copies of this video? That will really seal up the whole deal on this video since now one cannot produce, screen, distribute or pirate it.

Give reasons to Youtube to completely ignore the PAP's MDA's ridiculous censorship request to have the ban of this film released for viewing in Singapore.

Mr Qiang, it might be a small surprise to you, but Youtube is unlikely to acquiesce to any opportunists' assertions to "ignore the PAP's MDA's ridiculous censorship", as much as they would totally ignore any governments' attempt at censoring their content. They have much more to lose by being seen to be so accommodating.

By the way, what makes you so sure that the governments censorious tentacles have reached so far (to Youtube) and so blatantly? Or perhaps it's time to examine your mental model that anything that goes wrong with the oppositionists can be attributed to the "opportionee" (ie. government).

Frankly, it would do the opportionists among here to correct so of the far-fletched theories that are spouted here. It would gain them some level of respectability. Surely, correcting perceptions cannot be tantamount to censorship, right? :)

Mr Bryan,

I must congratulate you on your well thought out arguments, and I would agree with you if we were discussing politics in USA or UK or Australia etc.

But we are talking about the PAP in Singapore. You understand? The same organization that imprisoned (without trial) a group of social workers who were guilty of nothing more than wanting to help domestic workers in Singapore and for assisting opposition politicians. According to those detainees, they were tortured and forced to confess to being Marxists out to overthrow the government of Singapore.

If it isn't far-fetched to imagine innocent social workers to be Marxist terrorists, then I don't know what is. I mean come on... Even the American Homeland Security Department wouldn't be so 'far-fetched' lah...

Perhaps, before you tell the good people here to rein in their 'far-fetched' conspiracy theories, you should send a message to the PAP advising them to rein in their 'far-fetched' imagination. Just because social workers want to help domestic workers doesn't mean they are terrorists and just because foreigners pass constructive criticisms on your government doesn't mean they want to 'do us in'.

Come on... Helping maids = Conspiracy to overthrow government? *snort*

After decades of PAP rule, Singaporeans have come to expect some 'far-fetched' things from our leaders. So you can't blame us for coming up with 'far-fetched' conspiracy theories.

Singa Crew

Singa Crew,

I'm not so in tune with Australian politics, partly because it tends to be quite slow-paced (aka. boring). But at last, my general opinion of the quality of American politics is much lower than the local one. But that's another story. Minimally, I wouldn't use other countries as lower benchmarks for our government, least of all as an excuse for things that happen here.

I try my wee best to bring some value to both sides, and hopefully some inject some common-sense at the same time so that it hopefully prevail. I've sometimes targeted my pieces at government and statutory boards' policies; my favourite hunting ground currently is the LTA. But that's also another story.

Anyway, I see the venomous comments on opposition/oppositionist websites and feel that with the words that people use, they are not helping themselves get purposefully heard. Instead, what I see are incitements that have the opposite effect, since they will be disregarded by those who are in the position to make or allow changes on the political landscape. If one wants one's opinions to be heard, one has to display some sense of meaningfulness. Incitement to join the "meanlinglessness" crew is a perverse approach.

I thank you for listening. Zen!

I agree with you that most large organisations would inevitably encounter challenges coordinating all its parts. But small organisations do not excel too, if there are too many rabble-rousers within. The latter tend to distract and detract from the central cause.

The basic premise of my earlier comments were that some people have the tendency to throw in conspiracy theories whenever something untoward happens.

I'm happy to note that you have taken a more reasoned tack from the above and enlightened us to the possibilities of some complexities about copyright and electronic fingerprints.

I hope more members of the opposition and its supporters do likewise to keep their minds open and not resort to speculations to stir interest for their causes, unwittingly. Sometimes, we have to remind our supporters to make sense.