The recent fiasco over the YouTube banning has highlighted how we need a Ministry of ICT and not a ministry of communications that includes a bit of IT and media. Rather it should be one that takes ICT - information and communication technology - to heart, and understands the synergy and how emergent technologies that are neither purely matters of IT nor communications, such as YouTube, are the future.
According to Blognone.com webmaster Mark Isiriya Paireepairit, ICT Minister Sitthichai’s legacy would be how he had inadvertently forced the mass public to to seriously consider the issue of censorship. Many argue that it should be up to the courts (the judiciary), not the ICT Ministry (the executive) to order sites blocked.
Recently, I was talking to a fellow reporter, Varit Limthongkul at the Manager newspaper, who told me how lese majeste had been routinely used by the police as an excuse to persecute them during the Thaksin era.