I believe many readers would have by now read about MDA new regulations on online news websites. As an aggregator, I’m naturally concerned. My initial reaction was that it applies only to news related to sensitive topics like race, religion etc but reading up further; it applies to any news relating to Singapore. Alarm bells starting to ring now. Two conditions have to be met: – i) Average of one article per week on Singapore’s news… ii) are visited by at least 50,000 unique IP addresses from Singapore each month over a period of two months. I definitely meet the first condition and while I’m still far off from the second condition, it is my goal to consistently increase readership. Perhaps the greatest worry is their requirements of having to comply within 24 hours and the $50,000 license. 50 grand is a lot of money. As I manage the site myself, and this will mean that I will have to be to respond to MDA prompty or risk losing the 50 grand. Although I don't see my site being affected now, I still hope MDA will take a flexible approach on this. While I take it as just another challenge, it may be one obstacle too many. Should more stringent and stiffer guidelines/penalties be imposed, this may mean sayonara to my site – something which I hate to see happen. On a lighter note, if MDA does call me up one day. I hope that means my site can generate more than $50K annually and I’ll be able to hire a part timer to manage the site. I will see how things pan out over the next few months especially on finance related news sites.

---

PS: I hope this post don’t gather 50,000 unique IPs else MDA will be calling me earlier than expected.