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BANGKOK A court sentenced a Thai webmaster Wednesday to an eight-month suspended sentence for not moving quickly enough to delete online comments deemed insulting to the country's royalty in a case widely seen as a test of freedom of expression in Thailand.

While the ruling showed leniency, it also sent the message that Internet content in the Southeast Asian nation must be self-censored. Chiranuch Premchaiporn had faced up to 20 years in prison for failing to quickly remove 10 comments others had posted on her Prachatai news website.

She told reporters she found the verdict reasonable but still had thought she would be acquitted.

The case drew international concern over censorship of the Internet in general and the liability of a website operator for comments posted by a third party.

"Today's guilty verdict for Chiranuch Premchaiporn, for something somebody else wrote on her website, is a serious threat to the future of the Internet in Thailand," Taj Meadows, Asia Pacific spokesman for Internet services giant Google, said by email.

"Telephone companies are not penalized for things people say on the phone and responsible website owners should not be punished for comments users post on their sites," he wrote. "The precedent set today is bad for Thai businesses, users and the innovative potential of Thailand's Internet economy."

Chiranuch was prosecuted under Thailand's computer-crime laws, which were enacted in 2007 under an interim, unelected government that came to power after a coup a year earlier. The laws address hacking and other online offenses, but also bar the circulation of material deemed detrimental to national security, which includes defaming the monarchy.

Her case was inextricably linked to Thailand's fractious politics of recent years, as the country's traditional ruling class allying big business, the military and royalists has been desperately fighting to retain reverence for the monarchy and their influence over politics.

Most people still respect 84-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, but the evident involvement of palace circles in supporting the 2006 military coup against elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra opened the royal institution to unprecedented criticism, much of which was circulated on the Internet.

Bangkok Criminal Court Judge Kampol Rungrat said his guilty verdict was based on one particular post that was left on the Prachatai site for 20 days.

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Thai webmaster gets 8-month suspended sentence in case seen as test of free speech

By Suttinee Yuvejwattana and Daniel Ten Kate - 2012-05-30T05:06:45Z

Thai editor of the popular Prachatai news website, Chiranuch Premchaiporn smiles after the verdict at the Criminal Court in Bangkok on May 30,2012. A Thai court on May 30 convicted an online editor for hosting posts critical of the revered monarchy on her website, but suspended her jail sentence amid demands to reform the lese majeste law. Photograph: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/GettyImages

Thai editor of the popular Prachatai news website, Chiranuch Premchaiporn smiles after the verdict at the Criminal Court in Bangkok on May 30,2012. A Thai court on May 30 convicted an online editor for hosting posts critical of the revered monarchy on her website, but suspended her jail sentence amid demands to reform the lese majeste law. Photograph: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/GettyImages

A Thai court sentenced a webmaster to an eight-month suspended jail term today for failing to quickly remove royal insults from a Bangkok-based news website that has received U.S. government funding.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn, who manages the web-board for Prachatai, violated the Computer Crimes Act because she failed to erase the content deemed insulting to the monarchy, according to Bangkoks Criminal Court. Police charged her in 2009 under a crackdown initiated by former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and she faced as many as 20 years in prison, Human Rights Watch said in an April 24 statement.

The sentence is the latest in a growing number of convictions for royal insults that has prompted academics to call for revisions to the lese-majeste law, a move all of the countrys major political parties have denounced. The U.S., European Union and United Nations called on Thailand to respect freedom of speech following convictions last year.

The law, which falls under Article 112 of the criminal code, mandates jail sentences as long as 15 years for defaming, insulting or threatening the king, queen, heir apparent or regent. Yesterday the Campaign Committee for the Amendment of Article 112 submitted almost 30,000 signatures supporting a proposal to change the law, including reducing the maximum penalty to three years for insulting the king and two years for other family members, the Bangkok Post reported.

Prachatai is a non-profit daily web newspaper established in June 2004 that often includes articles about the monarchy. It has received $50,000 the past three years from the U.S.-taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy, according to its website.

To contact the reporters on this story: Suttinee Yuvejwattana in Bangkok at suttinee1@bloomberg.net; Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net

The rest is here:
Thai Webmaster Gets Suspended Jail Term Over Royal Insults

By Amy Sawitta Lefevre

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court handed an eight-month suspended sentence on Wednesday to a website editor for failing to quickly remove posts deemed offensive to the monarchy in a case that adds to growing debate over Thailand's draconian royal censorship laws.

The Bangkok Criminal Court ruled posts on the Prachatai news website (www.prachatai.com) were offensive to the royal family and that its editor, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, failed to remove them promptly, as requested by the court, allowing at least one to stay online for 20 days.

Thailand has some of the world's toughest lese majeste laws to penalise insults against the king, queen and crown prince, but critics say the legislation is used to discredit activists and politicians opposed to the royalist establishment.

Chiranuch, 44, was charged in 2010 in a crackdown on royal defamation under former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, whose supporters include Bangkok's traditional elite of top generals, royal advisers, middle-class bureaucrats and old-money families.

She faced a maximum 20 years in jail on 10 counts of supporting illegal content and violating the Computer Crimes Act, a controversial and wide-ranging law passed by a military-installed legislature following a 2006 coup.

The suspended sentence is a rare moment of leniency in a series of tough and highly criticised decisions by courts to protect the monarchy, an effort that has increased during what many see as the twilight of the reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand's long-hospitalised 84-year-old monarch.

"For someone involved in a lese-majeste content issue, this was a comparatively reasonable sentence," said David Streckfuss, a scholar and expert on Thailand's lese-majeste laws.

Many Thais revere the king, the world's longest-ruling monarch, and regard him as a unifying figure, but national unease over what follows his reign has added to recent political turbulence.

Deadly street riots, mob takeovers of airports and a coup in recent years reveal a country divided broadly between a yellow-shirted royalist elite and lower-income red-shirted supporters of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, toppled in 2006.

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Webmaster gets suspended sentence in Thai royal insult case

28-05-2012 20:55 Why restaurants need social media and SEO SEO and Social Media are not the same. They both compliment each other though and should both be part of a restaurant marketing plan.

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Restaurant Marketing Plan - SEO and Social Media for Restaurants - Video

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Why Enterprise SEO Shouldn’t Focus Solely On Keywords