Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 · 2020 Revised Edition · Part 5 · Declaration of Online Locations
36. Deriving benefit from operating declared online location
Feedback & supportA person who, whether in or outside Singapore, solicits, receives or agrees to receive any financial or other material benefit as an inducement or reward for operating a declared online location shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction —
material
“material” means anything that consists of or contains a statement;Examples Examples of a material are a message, a post, an article, a speech, a picture, a video recording and a sound recording.
in the case of an individual, to a fine not exceeding $40,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years or to both; or
in any other case, to a fine not exceeding $500,000.
Without limiting the generality of the expression, a person receives financial or other material benefit as an inducement or reward for the operation of an online location if the person receives from another —
online location
“online location” means any website, webpage, chatroom or forum, or any other thing that is hosted on a computer (as defined in the Computer Misuse Act 1993) and can be seen, heard or otherwise perceived by means of the internet;
any consideration for the sale of advertising space on the online location; or
any consideration for access to any part of the online location.
It is a defence to a charge under subsection (1) for the accused to prove that the accused did not know and had no reason to believe that the online location was a declared online location.
declared online location
“declared online location” means an online location that is the subject of a Declaration that is in effect;
Where a court convicts any person of an offence under subsection (1), the court must, in addition to imposing on that person the punishment in that subsection, order the person to pay as a penalty, within the time specified by the court, a sum equal to the amount of any financial or other material benefit received or the amount that in the court’s opinion is the value of that financial or other material benefit, and any such penalty is recoverable as a fine.
Subsection (4) does not apply if the court determines that the value of the financial or other material benefit cannot be assessed.
Where —
a person charged with 2 or more offences under subsection (1) is convicted of one or more of those offences; and
the other outstanding offences are taken into consideration by the court under section 148 of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 for the purpose of passing sentence,the court may increase the penalty mentioned in subsection (4) by an amount not exceeding the total amount or value of the financial or other material benefit received for the offences so taken into consideration.
In this section, a person is not taken to operate an online location if the person does so merely as part of providing an internet intermediary service or incidentally to such provision.
internet intermediary service
“internet intermediary service” means —(a)a service that allows end‑users to access materials originating from third parties on or through the internet;(b)a service of transmitting such materials to end‑users on or through the internet; or(c)a service of displaying, to an end‑user who uses the service to make an online search, an index of search results, each of which links that end‑user to content hosted or stored at a location which is separate from the location of the index of search results,but excludes any act done for the purpose of, or that is incidental to, the provision of —(d)a service of giving the public access to the internet; or(e)a computing resource service;Examples Examples of internet intermediary services are — (a) social networking services; (b) search engine services; (c) content aggregation services; (d) internet‑based messaging services; and (e) video‑sharing services.