Myanmar: News Media and Printing and Publishing Enterprises Law Reforms burden on printers, harming their ability to conduct business effectively and generally limiting the free exchange of information and ideas in society. Recommended Integration and Reform Any amended law should define much more clearly and narrowly its scope of application. While it seems unlikely that the authorities would enforce these rules against every person who writes a note or prints a document, vague laws enable abuse by bad faith actors to target those they disagree with or to attempt to influence the public narrative to their benefit. In addition, vague laws often have a chilling effect as individuals self-censor in an attempt to avoid any risk of violating the law. In a famous freedom of expression case, the European Court articulated the international standard for clarity in laws affecting freedom of expression: [A] norm cannot be regarded as a "law" unless it is formulated with sufficient precision to enable the citizen to regulate his conduct: he must be able - if need be with appropriate advice - to foresee, to a degree that is reasonable in the circumstances, the consequences which a given action may entail.10 A new law should provide clarity in two areas, namely the entities and the individuals it covers. In terms of the former, the focus should be on professional media entities, to the exclusion of others, such as academic and civil society organisations, which happen to write about issues of public interest. It should focus on media entities per se instead of the more amorphous concept of “publishing enterprises”, and consideration should be given to eliminating references to “publications”, which should instead be covered, as relevant, through the definition of news media entities. A more careful definition of terms such as “news media” will limit the problem of extending the regulatory regime to private and informal writings and correspondence. In terms of individuals, the focus should be on individuals who, on a professional basis, act as journalists or are otherwise directly involved in the newsgathering process (for example as camera persons or fixers). This should accordingly exclude those who work in a mere technical or service capacity in the media business, such as accountants, janitors and secretaries. A combined law also needs to clarify what online actors are to be regulated so as to clearly differentiate between online media and other forms of Internet use such as social media, discussion boards and individual blogs, which cannot generally be treated as professional media. Admittedly, the distinction between more “formal” online journalism and less formal information exchanges is not perfectly clear and this reflects a new regulatory challenge in the digital era. However, the focus should be on professional media outlets. Clearly this will cover online versions of legacy media. Within Europe, a litmus test for going beyond this is whether the entity has an editorial process or simply represents content prepared by an individual on his or her own. Another better practice to consider, used in Indonesia, is not to cover, as a rule, entities which operate exclusively online but to allow these entities to opt into 10 Sunday Times v. United Kingdom, 26 April 1979, Application No. 6537/74, para. 49. Available at: http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-57584. The Centre for Law and Democracy is a non-profit human rights organisation working internationally to provide legal expertise on foundational rights for democracy -4-