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The final hearings into the lese majeste charges against Prachatai webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiyaporn, who was arrested in March 2009, should be held this week.

"For three years I have had to live my life being accused of committing a crime under Section 14 and 15 of the Computer Crime Act (CCA) … without knowing when it will end," said Ms Chiranuch, in her opening statement before her trial resumed on Tuesday.

Lese majeste defendant and Prachatai webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiyaporn (Photo by Thiti Wannamontha)

Ms Chiranuch was arrested on March 6, 2009 and her trial began in the Criminal Court on March 31, 2010. At one point, she was detained in the court basement for four hours before a 300,000 baht bail guarantee was placed by her sister who was a nurse in a government hospital.

The hearings were initially scheduled for eight consecutive days in February last year but only lasted for four days with just five prosecution witnesses available. The other witnesses said they could not attend on the scheduled dates, resulting in the judges, prosecutors and the defence lawyers rescheduling a new hearing from September to October.

Because of the long time gap, the judges for the second session were changed under the annual routine shift of personnel in the bureaucratic system, she noted.

In September, the hearing of prosecution witnesses was completed and defense witnesses were then called. However, the massive flooding in Bangkok in October prevented the trial from continuing. Only San Francisco-based Danny O’Brien, a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, was heard.

This week the trial resumed with three more witnesses giving testimony to the Ratchada Court.

Dr Kitipumi Chutasmit, director of Phusing Hospital, told the Court he was one of a few dozen volunteer moderators that deleted or hid inappropriate content found on the Prachatai web board.

The volunteer network was a system Prachatai had developed by soliciting help from regular readers or users to oversee debate and comments posted on the website, Dr Kitipumi said. General readers could also inform the webmaster if they found undesirable content, the Si Sa Ket-based doctor said.

Sawatree Suksri, a Thammasat University law lecturer, told the court that internet freedom was a fundamental human right and a UN report released May last year stipulated that intermediaries should not be held liable for any offence committed by a third party except if they collaborated or knew about it.

Better protection for intermediaries could be seen in most European countries, the United States and some Asian nations. For example the laws give 10 to 14 days for intermediaries to delete illegal or inappropriate content after they have been told by the authorities, Ms Sawatree said.

Ms Sawatree, an expert on the criminal code and computer crime, also said the Computer Crime Act's article 15 did not specify a similar clause (for intermediaries to clearly implement the law).

The authorities, since the CCA's inception, have yet to issue certain guidelines or regulations for parties concerned to understand and expedite the law, she told the court.

Jittat Fakcharoenphol, Kasetsart Unviersity's assistant professor on computer engineering, told the court that he was approached to be a director and treasurer of Prachatai in 2008 since the webmaster was increasingly concerned that the volunteer administrators who helped look for dubious and inappropriate content might not be adequate.

"I was about to develop a machine-learning natural language processor which is a computer program that  will highlight and/or spot the type of content that we set in the system as problematic so that the webmaster will be able to delete it in time," Mr Jittat said.
Prachatai was also considering hiring more staff for 24-hour monitoring of contents and subsequent debates, however financial problems had prevented them from doing so, the academic said.

The program-assisted censorship and manning ideas eventually were not put in place since the webmaster had decided to close down the web board as they faced more problems, Mr Jittat said.

He told the court that with between 300 and 400 issues - and up to 30 debates on each - it was impossible for the webmaster to handle surveillance. Even with more staff, human error was also a factor, he said.

During cross-examination, the prosecutor asked if it was the duty of the webmaster to take full responsibility for supervising the webboard administration. Mr Jittat said that was the case in principle.

The prosecutor asked if the problematic content printed as evidence shown to the court was all from Prachatai. Mr Jittat said the print-outs looked similar to the Prachatai webboard, but he could not guarantee or confirm if the alleged contents really appeared. As a general reader, he had not seen the content before.

"Technically, it cannot also be proved 100 per cent that what you see in front of the computer screen is content from the URL shown in the print-outs. Additions or deletions in the content page could take place before it is printed," he said.

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