The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced yesterday that it has blocked online news portal, The Malaysian Insider (TMI), for violating the Communication and Multimedia Act 1998.
Malaysians accessing the site since Thursday evening are greeted with the following page.
It appears that all local traffic to The Malaysian Insider portal are routed to the Telekom Malaysia network where the blocked notice page is served by MCMC.
In a statement released on Thursday, the MCMC said that the restrictions follow material published by the news portal that fall under offences under Section 233 of the Act.
The restriction was also done by the MCMC based on several complaints received from the public, it said.
MCMC also reminded other news portals not to spread or publish articles from unconfirmed sources as the act could create confusion and could trigger an unwanted situation.
In response, The Malaysian Insider took online a secondary site with a different URL: http://www.themalaysianoutsider.com/
The new URL was also blocked by MCMC around 6pm today.
Coincidentally Thursday is the eighth anniversary of the commencement of TMI operations on Feb 25, 2008.
According to The Malaysian Insider, readers could still access their contents on WordPress at www.themalaysianinsider.wordpress.com . Their social media accounts include: Facebook (themalaysianinsider), Twitter (@tm_insider) or Instagram (@themalaysianinsider).
Note: The block appears to be done at the local ISP DNS. The portal could still be easily accessed by using a different DNS, such as the one from Google. Here’s a guide on how to change your computer DNS [link].