Thursday, May 31, 2012

Thai Message Board Manager Is Given Suspended Prison Sentence


Fuller, Thomas and Kevin Drew. "Thai Message Board Manager Is Given Suspended Prison Sentence." The New York Times, May 30, 2012.

From the article: "A Thai court sentenced the manager of an Internet message board to a one-year suspended prison term on Wednesday for comments posted by users that insulted the Thai royal family. The sentence was immediately condemned by Google and human rights groups. The manager of the site, Prachatai, a popular forum for discussions about politics and culture, was convicted of lèse-majesté, as royal insults are known, under Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act. Courts in Thailand have jailed people convicted of lèse-majesté with increasing frequency in recent years, but the verdict on Wednesday was unusual in that the defendant, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, was not the author of the offending comments; she was just the Web master of the site that hosted them." Read more