The Government has made changes to the Broadcasting Act, posting a notice on the Government Gazette today (May 29).
The amendments come after the announcement yesterday of a new licensing regime for news websites that meet certain criteria.
The notice states that sites that are accessed from at least 50,000 different Internet protocol addresses in Singapore per month on average, over any period of 2 consecutive months, and that contain at least one Singapore news programme per week on average, over the same period of 2 consecutive months, will be excluded from the automatic class licence scheme, Instead, these sites will be licensed under new rules starting from Saturday.
According to the notice, content under sub-domains of a website will be considered as part of the domain of the website.
All mirrored websites shall be regarded as part of the original website, if the original site is duplicated or transferred to one or more sites in or from Singapore.
The notice further defines what is a Singapore news programme, which means “any programme (whether or not the programme is presenter-based and whether or not the programme is provided by a third party) containing any news, intelligence, report of occurrence, or any matter of public interest, about any social, economic, political, cultural, artistic, sporting, scientific or any other aspect of Singapore in any language (whether paid or free and whether at regular intervals or otherwise)”.
This, however, “does not include any programme produced by or on behalf of the Government”.