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Comment by true_religion | Hacker News Reader

You can't possess or view pornography---that's a violation of free speech. There's more.

But the only positive that's trumpeted about singapore is that their streets are clean and their city beautiful. This is good for the tourist, but not necessarily a place you want to move to.

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National Geographic ran a special on Singapore a year or so ago and one thing they described was a proliferation of thinly disguised "massage parlors" in malls. In a police state that Singapore is it basically means that these outlets are approved by the government, so the whole pornography issue is really quite multifaceted.

The same special described the general idea behind the chewing gum and jaywalking laws -- it is to whip citizens into the proper shape and to force them to behave decently. An extreme variation of the broken window theory if you will. And to top it off, there might be a government, but there is the father of the nation who, the man who developed the very idea of Singapore. He is in his 70s (?) and it is not clear how things will develop with his passing.

Any Singaporeans here care to comment on NG's take on Singapore? Curious to know how off it is.

Are you equating semi-legal prostitution with the possession of pornography?

I was just in Singapore for 2 weeks. The streets aren't all that clean. Cleaner than San Francisco or NYC yes... but there is litter in the mornings and evenings and this was even in the highly tourist areas downtown by the Marina Bay. (Awesome hotel pool at least, but that's not how I would pick a place to live)

"You can't possess or view pornography---that's a violation of free speech."

I'm not sure I can digest that outright. Can you elaborate?

The law is not just about porn, but also other "obscene material" like pro-LGBT material, material critical of the regime (Wired is banned because of this), illegal Bibles etc.

Wired is not banned you can get the UK & US editions in most bookshops. It's just expensive!

Various publications that have been critical of the political environment have been dragged into court to deal with Singapore's not-so-friendly libel laws.

The LGBT situation is culturally more acceptable than it was, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

NB: I am a liberal Brit who lives and works in Singapore (nearly 5 years now)

Ah, sorry. I misintrepreted the information on Wikipedia about the issue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Penal...

How is pornography related to free speech?

It's an artistic medium. While not speech, it's a means of expression.

If a person wants to distribute recordings of consenting adults having sex to those that want to see it, I see no point in criminalizing them for doing so. It's infringing on a basic human right and I don't understand how anyone could possibly be in support of such a frivolous law.

> I don't understand how anyone could possibly be in support of such a frivolous law.

Because porn is Bad and the law exists to stop Bad things from happening.

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